David Attenborough Quotes
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An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.
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You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
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All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.
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Trade is a proper and decent relationship, with dignity and respect on both sides.
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I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.
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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.
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People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.
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Nature isn't positive in that way. It doesn't aim itself at you. It's not being unkind to you.
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The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
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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.
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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.
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Crying wolf is a real danger.
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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.
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It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I can mention many moments that were unforgettable and revelatory. But the most single revelatory three minutes was the first time I put on scuba gear and dived on a coral reef. It's just the unbelievable fact that you can move in three dimensions.
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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.
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Natural history is not about producing fables.
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I'm luckier than my grandfather, who didn't move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.
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I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.
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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.
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Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.