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Trade is a proper and decent relationship, with dignity and respect on both sides.
David Attenborough -
You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
David Attenborough
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Dealing with global warming doesn't mean we have all got to suddenly stop breathing. Dealing with global warming means that we have to stop waste, and if you travel for no reason whatsoever, that is a waste.
David Attenborough -
Nature isn't positive in that way. It doesn't aim itself at you. It's not being unkind to you.
David Attenborough -
The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
David Attenborough -
An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.
David Attenborough -
Crying wolf is a real danger.
David Attenborough -
I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to promote myself. These days there's far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won't be lost.
David Attenborough
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If my grandchildren were to look at me and say, 'You were aware species were disappearing and you did nothing, you said nothing', that I think is culpable. I don't know how much more they expect me to be doing, I'd better ask them.
David Attenborough -
The process of making natural history films is to try to prevent the animal knowing you are there, so you get glimpses of a non-human world, and that is a transporting thing.
David Attenborough -
It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
David Attenborough -
It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.
David Attenborough -
I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.
David Attenborough -
It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.
David Attenborough
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People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.
David Attenborough -
I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.
David Attenborough -
I'm luckier than my grandfather, who didn't move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.
David Attenborough -
The most extraordinary thing about trying to piece together the missing links in the evolutionary story is that when you do find a missing link and put it in the story, you suddenly need all these other missing links to connect to the new discovery. The gaps and questions actually increase - it's extraordinary.
David Attenborough -
Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that.
David Attenborough -
I mean, it is an extraordinary thing that a large proportion of your country and my country, of the citizens, never see a wild creature from dawn 'til dusk, unless it's a pigeon, which isn't really wild, which might come and settle near them.
David Attenborough
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We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that's what's happening. Too many people there. They can't support themselves - and it's not an inhuman thing to say. It's the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it's going to get worse and worse.
David Attenborough -
We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense; we've got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven't done is developed our technology.
David Attenborough -
London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.
David Attenborough -
Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough