Jane Goodall — "We need to listen to the voices of the natural world, and learn from them."
We need to listen to the voices of the natural world, and learn from them.
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More from Jane Goodall
"We need to educate the next generation about the importance of protecting the environment."
"The greatest lesson I learned from the chimpanzees is that we are not so different from them."
"Chimpanzees are so like us, they have a very human-like capacity for evil."
"The only way to make sure that we don't destroy the future is to make sure that our children are educated in a way that they understand the interconnectedness of all life."
"The future depends on what we do in the present."
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
Humans must pay genuine attention to signals from nature — animal behavior, ecological patterns, environmental shifts — rather than treating the natural world as a backdrop to human activity. The message is straightforward: nature communicates through its systems and creatures, and our survival depends on our willingness to observe, respect, and incorporate those lessons into how we live.
Relevance to Jane Goodall
Goodall spent decades in Gombe Stream, Tanzania, sitting quietly in forests earning chimpanzees' trust before they accepted her presence. Her entire methodology was built on listening and watching without imposing human assumptions. She discovered tool use in chimps by patient observation, overturning scientific consensus. Her later conservation advocacy grew directly from what the natural world taught her about interconnection and loss.
The era
Goodall's career spans the 1960s to present, coinciding with accelerating deforestation, the sixth mass extinction, and climate change becoming undeniable. The 1970s environmental movement, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and growing biodiversity loss created urgent context for this message. As industrial expansion silenced ecosystems globally, Goodall's call to listen pushed back against a culture treating nature as resource rather than teacher.
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