A Quote by Jane Goodall

Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.
But that Franklin trip changed me profoundly. As I believe wilderness experience changes everyone. Because it puts us in our place. The human place, which our species inhabited for most of its evolutionary life. That place that shaped our psyches and made us who we are. The place where nature is big and we are small.
I think to try to understand human behavior and why people do what they do, and what in their lives have shaped them and impacted them to be who they are, it's something. I mean, that's my entire life.
Becoming chronically ill has definitely given me a greater understanding of human nature, and I've learned to accept people's lack of long-term compassion for others while they live their busy lives.
I don't measure people by whether they agree with me or not. I measure them by their sincerity. Sincerity, with as much reality as you can get. Sincerity with toughness, experience, and understanding of the issue - real understanding, not just academic and intellectual understanding. That takes some courage.
And I thought how sad it was that, for all our sophisticated intellect, for all our noble aspirations, our aggressive behavior was not just similar in many ways to that of the chimpanzees - it was even worse. Worse because human beings have the potential to rise above their baser instincts, whereas chimpanzees probably do not.
There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world.
Understanding human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life. Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons. When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.
The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
Ever wonder how much patience you should have with someone, you know, before you lose your temper? Infinite. But careful now. That doesn't mean you have to wait for them, stay with them, or hang around them. Lord no, it just means that for as long as you choose to keep them in your life, understanding them, not changing them, is everything.
In the deep, unwritten wisdom of life there are many things to be learned that cannot be taught. We never know them by hearing them spoken, but we grow into them by experience and recognize them through understanding. Understanding is a great experience in itself, but it does not come through instruction.
Given the scale of life in the cosmos, one human life is no more than a tiny blip. Each one of us is a just visitor to this planet, a guest, who will only stay for a limited time. What greater folly could there be than to spend this short time alone, unhappy or in conflict with our companions? Far better, surely, to use our short time here in living a meaningful life, enriched by our sense of connection with others and being of service to them.
I'm always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.
It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends.
When the kids were growing up, they learned to be independent. I told them, 'As long as you're doing something good, it's worth pursuing.' That's why I invested in them in the first place and gave them as much as I could for their first company, Zip2.
Freedom isn't the right or ability to do whatever you please. Freedom comes from understanding the limits of our own power and the inherent limits set in place by nature. By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, you become truly free.
Cooking is what makes us human. For example, Chimpanzees spend eight to ten hours trying to feed themselves, they are occupied by it, eating basically indigestible things. Once our human ancestors learn to cook things, suddenly we didn't have to spend that much time on digestion, our brains expanded, and we think about other things.
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