Frasi di Jane Goodall

„Certamente non siamo gli unici animali che vivono l'esperienza del dolore e della sofferenza. In altre parole, non c'è una linea netta tra l'animale uomo e il resto del regno animale. È una linea indistinta e lo sarà sempre…
La paura in una scimmia, un cane, un maiale, viene vissuta verosimilmente alla stessa maniera della specie umana. Giovani animali, umani o di altre specie, mostrano, difatti, comportamenti simili quando sono ben nutriti e sicuri – sono vivaci, saltellano, fanno piroette, rimbalzano, fanno capriole – tanto che è difficile non credere che non provino sentimenti molto simili. Essi sono, in altre parole, pieni di gioia di vivere – sono felici… un giovane scimpanzé, dopo la morte della sua mamma, mostra un comportamento simile alla depressione che affligge i bambini – postura incurvata, dondolio, occhi offuscati fissi nel vuoto, perdita di interesse per quanto accade attorno a sé. Se un piccolo d'uomo può soffrire di dolore, così può soffrire un giovane scimpanzé…
…stare a chiedersi se scimpanzé, elefanti, cani e così via, sperimentino felicità, tristezza, disperazione, rabbia, è uno spreco di tempo – poiché queste cose sono evidenti a chiunque abbia… sperimentato nella sua vita una conoscenza degli animali.“

—  Jane Goodall

Origine: Da Premessa, in Marc Bekoff, La vita emozionale degli animali; citato in Marini, [//books.google.it/books?id=fDaVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA185 p. 185].

„Non ci volle molto per convincermi che le iene sono seconde solo agli scimpanzè quanto a fascino, perché sono dei pagliacci nati, assolutamente individualiste e vivono in una società ben ordinata ed estremamente complessa.“

—  Jane Goodall

Origine: Assassini innocenti, p. 28

„Sono determinata a far sì che i miei pronipoti possano andare in Africa e trovare scimmie antropomorfe selvatiche.“

—  Jane Goodall

Origine: Citato in AA.VV., Il libro dell'ecologia, traduzione di Roberto Sorgo, Gribaudo, 2019, p. 125. ISBN 9788858024362

„Le iene, diversamente dalla gran parte degli altri carnivori, nascono in uno stadio di sviluppo avanzato, hanno gli occhi aperti, molti denti già erotti, sono sorprendentemente vivaci e in grado di spostarsi sulle zampe anteriori.“

—  Jane Goodall

Origine: Assassini innocenti, p. 156

„Mi avvicinavo sempre di più agli animali, alla natura, e di conseguenza a me stessa. Ero in sintonia con quella grande forza spirituale che mi circondava.“

—  Jane Goodall

„Ogni scimpanzé ha una personalità unica e ciascuno/a ha la propria storia individuale.“

—  Jane Goodall

Origine: Da Gli scimpanzé: un ponte da gettare, in Il Progetto Grande Scimmia; citato in Marini, [//books.google.it/books?id=fDaVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA183 p. 183].

„You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.“

—  Jane Goodall

„The most important thing is to actually think about what you do. To become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the environment and on society. That's key, and that underlies everything else.“

—  Jane Goodall

As quoted in Going Blue: A Teen Guide to Saving Our Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, & Wetlands (2010) by Cathryn Berger Kaye and Philippe Cousteau, p. 14

„What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.“

—  Jane Goodall

„The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.“

—  Jane Goodall

Reported in Janelle Rohr, Animal rights: opposing viewpoints (1989), p. 100; Jane Goodall and Jennifer Lindsey, Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe (1999), p. 6. Occasionally misreported in truncated form, as "The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves", in, e.g., quote honored on XOEarth eco money http://xoearth.org/jane-goodall/

„Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.“

—  Jane Goodall

" An Interview with Jane Goodall https://web.archive.org/web/20100920074838/http://www.idausa.org:80/essays/goodallinterview.html", In Defense of Animals (date unknown)
Contesto: Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings. They don't want to admit that they might have minds and personalities because that would make it quite difficult for them to do what they do; so we find that within the lab communities there is a very strong resistance among the researchers to admitting that animals have minds, personalities and feelings.

„Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs— and the journey to get there— before finally leaving their miserable world, only too often after a painful death.“

—  Jane Goodall

The Ten Trusts (2003), p. xv

„In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.“

—  Jane Goodall

"Chimpanzees - Bridging the Gap", in Paola Cavalieri, Peter Singer, The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1996), p. 14

„Today it is generally accepted that although the earliest humans probably ate some meat, it was unlikely to have played a major role in their diet. Plants would have been a much more important source of food.“

—  Jane Goodall

Harvest for Hope (2006)

„Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?“

—  Jane Goodall

„We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place--or not to bother“

—  Jane Goodall

„I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior.“

—  Jane Goodall

Frans de Waal, in a NOVA interview, " The Bonobo in All of Us" PBS (1 January 2007) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/bonobo-all-us.html; quotes from this interview were for some time misplaced on this page, which probably generated similar misattributions elsewhere, and the misplacement was not discovered until after this quotation had been selected for Quote of the Day, as a quote of Goodall. Corrections were subsequently made here, during the day the quote was posted as QOTD.
Misattributed
Contesto: I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years.

„We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.“

—  Jane Goodall

Origine: Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating

„Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?“

—  Jane Goodall

Origine: Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating