Jane Goodall — "The more I learn about animals, the more I love them."
The more I learn about animals, the more I love them.
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More from Jane Goodall
"The natural world is our greatest teacher, and we should listen to its lessons."
"The greatest lesson I learned from the chimpanzees is that we are all connected."
"I believe that we can make a difference, if we just try."
"We need to listen to the voices of the natural world, and learn from them."
"We have so much to learn from the natural world. If we just open our eyes and listen."
About Jane Goodall (born 1934)
British primatologist who in 1960 began the longest-running wild primate study at Gombe Stream, transforming our understanding of chimpanzees. Closely associated with Dian Fossey (mountain-gorilla researcher) and Birutė Galdikas (orangutan researcher; together with Goodall and Fossey one of Louis Leakey's 'Trimates'). For an intellectual contrast, see Walter Palmer, American dentist who killed Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe in 2015 — Palmer represents the trophy-hunting tradition Goodall's life's work has been organized against — the colonial-era hunter-naturalist worldview that treated primates and big game as specimens or trophies, which Goodall's Roots & Shoots and Jane Goodall Institute exist specifically to displace.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Knowledge deepens emotional connection — the more you truly understand something, the more you care for it. Learning about animals means discovering their intelligence, complex social lives, individual personalities, and capacity for feeling. What once seem like instinct-driven creatures become individuals worthy of care and protection. Understanding replaces indifference; familiarity breeds not contempt but affection. Science and genuine compassion, far from being opposites, naturally reinforce each other.
Relevance to Jane Goodall
Goodall began observing chimpanzees at Gombe Stream, Tanzania in 1960 with no formal scientific degree, only curiosity and open-mindedness. Naming individuals like David Greybeard and witnessing their tool use, grief, and social bonds transformed her understanding — and her devotion. That deepening knowledge drove her to found the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots youth program, spending decades advocating for the animals she once simply studied.
The era
Goodall began her chimpanzee research in 1960, when mainstream science dismissed animal emotion as anthropomorphism and habitat destruction was accelerating globally. Industrial expansion was decimating wildlife populations, and conservation as a discipline barely existed. Her discoveries arrived just as environmental consciousness was stirring — Earth Day launched in 1970, the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973. Her insistence that knowing animals means loving them helped shift both science and policy toward protection.
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