Jane Goodall Quotes

We know there are certain chemicals that are designed to give us a rush of pleasure. But, one of the most amazing things about being human is our capacity to override that pleasure. To either say, 'I don't need that pleasure right now. I'm going to ignore the craving.' Or to find something else that we find a deeper sense of reward from.

It's really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don't get in trouble.

I'm very interested in the way people interact emotionally.

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.

It is O. K. for me to feel angry and to express it in responsible ways.

People act on the outside the way they feel on the inside.

We all have to control our feelings. That's the thing that separates us from animals.

...no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.

If you did everything your mind told you to do, you do some really strange stuff. You'll probably be in jail, you'll be in trouble. But, it's all about control. We all have to control our feelings. That's the thing that separates us from animals.

People tolerate those they fear further than those they love.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

You know how I get angry sometimes? That's because it's the only way I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I'm really here.

Choosing what we think rather than reaction to our emotions.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Money and sex are forces too unruly for our reason; they can only be controlled by taboos with which we tamper at our peril.

The chimpanzees taught me a lot about nonverbal communication. The big difference between them and us is that they don't have spoken language. Everything else is almost the same: Kissing, embracing, swaggering, shaking the fist.

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.

Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.

I sing what I sing true. Each night I sing it the way I feel that night.

Monologue is the most honest way to represent human beings.

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

Let reason govern desire.

Our modern ideas of 'functioning' through things are really quite inhuman. We have this idea that no matter what is going on we still have to color between the lines, act normal.

When mankind goes back to treating people the way you want to be treated, things will settle, I don't see that happening. I treat people the way I want to be treated, which makes me odd.

I'm human. That's how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.