32 quotes
Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.
Especially now when views are becoming more polarized, we must work to understand each other across political, religious and national boundaries.
Anyone who tries to improve the lives of animals invariably comes in for criticism from those who believe such efforts are misplaced in a world of suffering humanity.
Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000)
Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.
With Love (1999)
The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
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.
Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.
I wanted to talk to the animals like Dr. Dolittle.
Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. Only if we help shall they be saved.
You need hope to get you going, but then by taking action, you generate more hope. It’s a circular thing.
The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times (2021)
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.
Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is alright, as long your values don't change.
Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so.
The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times (2021)
It is our disregard for nature and our disrespect of the animals we should share the planet with that has caused this pandemic, that was predicted long ago.
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.
Harvest for Hope (2006)
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.
The Ten Trusts (2003)
Just remember — if you are really and truly determined to work with animals, somehow, either now or later, you will find a way to do it. But you have to want it desperately, work hard, take advantage of an opportunity — and never give up.
My Life with the Chimpanzees (1996)
Animals tell us something. If the animals have suffered this way [from GMOs], potentially for us, let’s listen to what they’re telling us. Let’s take heed.
The more we learn of the true nature of non-human animals, especially those with complex brains and corresponding complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man — whether this be in entertainment, as "pets," for food, in research laboratories, or any of the other uses to which we subject them.
Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (2000)
But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees.
Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (2000)