David Attenborough Quotes

Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?

David Attenborough

• World
• Eyes
• Bird

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Quotes to Explore

• I don't like rats, but there's not much else I don't like. The problem with rats is they have no fear of human beings, they're loaded with foul diseases, they would run the place given half the chance, and I've had them leap out of a lavatory while I've been sitting on it.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Fear

• We are a plague on the Earth.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Earth

• Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Real
  • Success

• Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes thought of as primitive, dull and dimwitted. In fact, of course, they can be lethally fast, spectacularly beautiful, surprisingly affectionate and very sophisticated.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Beautiful

• You can cry about death and very properly so, your own as well as anybody else's. But it's inevitable, so you'd better grapple with it and cope and be aware that not only is it inevitable, but it has always been inevitable, if you see what I mean.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Death

• I've been bitten by a python. Not a very big one. I was being silly, saying: 'Oh, it's not poisonous...' Then, wallop! But you have fear around animals.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Fear
  • Silly

• If I can bicycle, I bicycle.

  

  David Attenborough

• There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive.

  

  David Attenborough
  • World
  • Different

• The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Environment

• I'd like to see the giant squid. Nobody has ever seen one. I could tell you people who have spent thousands and thousands of pounds trying to see giant squid. I mean, we know they exist because we have seen dead ones. But I have never seen a living one. Nor has anybody else.

  

  David Attenborough
  • People
  • Trying

• I am an ardent recycler. I would like to think that it works. I don't know whether it does or not.

  

  David Attenborough

• People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.

  

  David Attenborough
  • People
  • World
  • Important

• You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.

  

  David Attenborough
  • History
  • Value
  • Environment

• I don’t like rats but there’s not much else I don’t like.

  

  David Attenborough

• I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature.

  

  David Attenborough
  • People
  • Power
  • Nature

• Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Work
  • Respect

• I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Question
  • Clever

• I'm absolutely strict about it. When I land, I put my watch right, and I don't care what I feel like, I will go to bed at half past eleven. If that means going to bed early or late, that's what I live by. As soon as you get there, live by that time.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Time
  • Live
  • Past

• It's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.

  

  David Attenborough
  • World
  • Home
  • Food

• The thing about a bush baby is that the male establishes its territory by peeing on his hands and putting it all on the walls. And after you've had a pair for about six months, you can see people coming into the house, sniffing and going: ‘Now, that’s definitely not mulligatawny soup.’

  

  David Attenborough
  • People
  • House
  • Baby

• The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.

  

  David Attenborough
  • Life
  • World
  • Thinking

• The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.

  

  David Attenborough
  • World
  • Good
  • Music

• People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.

  

  David Attenborough
  • People
  • Future

• I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival.

  

  David Attenborough