Jane Goodall — "We have to learn to live in harmony with all living things, or we will perish."
We have to learn to live in harmony with all living things, or we will perish.
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More from Jane Goodall
"We have so much to learn from the natural world. If we just open our eyes and listen."
"We have so much to learn from the animals, if we would only listen."
"I'm not an activist, I'm a pragmatist. I just want to save the world."
"I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist who believes in the power of hope."
"We cannot live in a world where we're constantly taking, taking, taking, and not giving anything back."
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
Humanity must stop treating nature as a resource to exploit and instead recognize that all life on Earth is interconnected. If we continue destroying ecosystems, driving species extinct, and disrupting natural balances, we undermine the very systems that sustain human life. Survival demands a fundamental shift from dominance over nature to cooperation with it.
Relevance to Jane Goodall
Goodall spent decades living among chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, observing their complex social bonds and emotional lives. This proximity transformed her into a relentless conservation advocate. Having witnessed firsthand the destruction of African forests and wildlife, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute and Roots & Shoots program, dedicating her life to proving coexistence is possible.
The era
Goodall's career spans the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a period of accelerating deforestation, mass extinction, and climate change. When she began research in 1960, environmental awareness was nascent. By the 1990s and 2000s, biodiversity loss and habitat destruction had become global crises, giving her warning urgent, measurable weight backed by collapsing species populations worldwide.
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