Jane Goodall Quotes

Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.

We’re all alive, but we don’t know why or what for; we’re all searching for happiness; we’re all leading lives which are different and yet the same.

As human beings, we always have resistance against things that are different and there's always suspicion.

Fortunately, in her kindness and patience, Nature has never put the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people. And where no one asks, no one needs to answer.

When skies are hanged and oceans drowned, the single secret will still be man

When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why?

Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow this star.

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

We are all, always, the desire not to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's complexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to be, to be more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have, all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in one way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new sensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and to add it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon the fear of death. That is what it is.

I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.

Humanity, you never had it from the beginning." That was my motto.

There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word-- Man

You deny that man is really so prejudiced as I suppose him; talk to him then of some foreign country, ask him what religion he is of.

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different.

The proper study of Mankind is Everything.

Where do we come from? What are We? Where are we going?

We may be different races and religions but we are all part of the same human family

It makes life so much easier when you can just say 'I'm human' at the end of the day."

Man will not live without answers to his questions.

Could anything be absurder than a man? The animal who knows everything about himself--except why he was born and the meaning of his unique existence.

Anthropology studies different cultures; mainly primitive, but it doesn't think its own culture is primitive, unfortunately. There is no field that you can study today that isn't trapped in the culture in some way. It's hard to escape your culture.