In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term.

- Richard Leakey

It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three quarters of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million, as …

- Richard Leakey

Spoken language clearly differentiates Homo sapiens from all other creatures. None but humankind produces a complex spoken language, a medium for com…

- Richard Leakey

It seems inconceivable that a species of human could possess fully modern language and not be fully modern in all other ways, too. For this reason, t…

- Richard Leakey

Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.

- Richard Leakey

To me it's a question of being able to look backward and give the present a root... To give meaning to where we are today, we need to look at where w…

- Richard Leakey

The problem of the apes is not a shortage of money, it is a shortage of strategy. Let us devote our minds... the one thing we have more of than other…

- Richard Leakey

It's the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause

- Richard Leakey

Humans become human through intense learning not just of survival skills but of customs and social mores, kinship and social laws-that is, culture.

- Richard Leakey