Jane Goodall Quotes

Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker - yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

Elephants are like humans. They are very smart, very logical.

The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties.

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

Chimps don't have language. Humans actively instruct others about how things should be done. Chimpanzees probably pick up cultural traditions by observation.

For origin and development of human faculty we must look to these processes of association in lower animals.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking - all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge.

When you think of intelligence, don't think of a college professor; think of human beings as opposed to chimpanzees. If you don't have human intelligence, you're not even in the game.

A consciousness of history is one of the key factors that distinguishes us from other animals.

I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don't have what we call intelligence, and they're surviving just fine.

Making fun of people's looks is something that children do - mean children - and, in fact, linguists have determined that Trump actually speaks like a 3rd grader.

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away.

Even a cat has things it can do that AI cannot.

There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.

I think it indisputable that the distance between the intellectual faculties of different men is greater than that between the same faculties in some men and some other animals.

There are a lot of smart creatures out there. Dolphins, elephants, and whales are smart. And there are some really smart birds. I know some really intelligent fish. But they cannot know what humans know and are incapable of inflicting as much damage.

He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another...we consider those, where the intellectual faculties most developed as the highest. - A bee doubtless would [use] ... instincts as a criteria.

Most birds are geniuses. We had one that became a pet; he learned to talk, use tools and solve problems.

When it comes to social interaction, the chimpanzees appear to be just as intelligent as we are.