Truth or tact? You have to choose. Most times they are not compatible.
When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it's just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them.
I started as - well, I wanted to be Poet Laureate. And I wanted to be a naturalist. That's how I began. I didn't have any desire to go and be a scientist. Louis Leakey channeled me there. I'm delighted he did. I love science. I love analyzing and making sense of all these observations. So, it was the perfect rounding off of who I was into who I am.
It's the bond between mother and child, which is really for us and for chimps and other primates, the root of all the expressions of social behavior.
It was both fascinating and appalling to learn that chimpanzees were capable of hostile and territorial behavior that was not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare.
There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. All the time, we find animals doing things that, in our arrogance, we thought were just human.
From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That's what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.
I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me.
I think they are grooming me as another Gary Cooper.
I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.
I think every athlete has their window of opportunity, and you just have to jump on it. You never know when it can end. So I'm just trying to live large while I have the opportunity.