Jane Goodall — "Animals are not just things. They're living beings with feelings, just like us."
Animals are not just things. They're living beings with feelings, just like us.
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More from Jane Goodall
"My dream is a world where humans and animals can coexist in harmony."
"We have to learn to live in harmony with all living things, or we will perish."
"I believe that we can overcome the challenges we face, if we work together."
"We are all interconnected. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves."
"I can't imagine living without hope. It's what keeps me going."
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
Animals deserve moral consideration beyond their utility to humans. This quote rejects the idea that animals are mere objects—property to be used, commodities to be consumed—and asserts they are sentient beings capable of emotional experience. Recognizing animal feelings demands we reconsider how we treat them in research, agriculture, and daily life. It is a call for empathy to extend beyond our own species.
Relevance to Jane Goodall
Goodall spent decades living among chimpanzees at Gombe Stream, Tanzania, observing tool use, grief, warfare, and affection that shattered assumptions about the emotional divide between humans and animals. Her practice of naming individual chimps rather than numbering them was criticized as unscientific, but reflected her conviction that each animal has a distinct personality and inner life. She later devoted her career entirely to animal welfare and conservation advocacy.
The era
When Goodall began her Gombe research in 1960, behaviorism dominated science and attributing emotions to animals was dismissed as anthropomorphism. Industrial agriculture was scaling rapidly, treating livestock as production units. The animal rights movement was nascent—Peter Singer's landmark Animal Liberation did not appear until 1975. Goodall's fieldwork helped shift scientific consensus toward recognizing animal sentience, coinciding with emerging environmental movements and growing public debate over laboratory animal testing.
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