Best 154 quotes of David Attenborough on MyQuotes

David Attenborough

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    David Attenborough

    All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life

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    David Attenborough

    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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    David Attenborough

    All the modern devices we have enable us to investigate things and have enabled us to do better.

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    David Attenborough

    All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.

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    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...

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    David Attenborough

    Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist

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    David Attenborough

    Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist.

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    David Attenborough

    Apart from anything else, I am designed by evolution, like we all are: if we see a little thing like that, big eyes, tiny nose, we go 'aaah'. That's what evolution does. We are programmed to do that. So to find babies the most amazing, isn't surprising, I don't think.

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    David Attenborough

    As far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then He chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world... which doesn't seem to me to be necessarily blasphemous at all.

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    David Attenborough

    At a time when it's possible for thirty people to stand on the top of Everest in one day, Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. A place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world at its most dramatic and, what's more, witness them almost exactly as they were, long, long before human beings ever arrived on the surface of this planet. Long may it remain so.

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    David Attenborough

    Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.

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    David Attenborough

    Being in touch with the natural world is crucial.

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    David Attenborough

    Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious.

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    David Attenborough

    Birds were flying from continent to continent long before we were. They reached the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica, long before we did. They can survive in the hottest of deserts. Some can remain on the wing for years at a time. They can girdle the globe. Now, we have taken over the earth and the sea and the sky, but with skill and care and knowledge, we can ensure that there is still a place on Earth for birds in all their beauty and variety - if we want to... And surely, we should.

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    David Attenborough

    Bringing nature into the classroom can kindle a fascination and passion for the diversity of life on earth and can motivate a sense of responsibility to safeguard it.

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    David Attenborough

    Cameramen are among the most extraordinarily able and competent people I know. They have to have an insight into natural history that gives them a sixth sense of what the creature is going to do, so they can be ready to follow.

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    David Attenborough

    Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife?

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    David Attenborough

    Children start off reading in books about lions and giraffes and so on, but they also-if theyre lucky enough and have reasonable privileges of any human being-are able to go into a garden and turn over stone and see a worm and see a slug and see an ant.

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    David Attenborough

    Clearly we could devastate the world... as far as we know, the Earth is the only place in the universe where there is life. Its continued survival now rests in our hands

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    David Attenborough

    Climate change will affect the whole of humanity, while terrorist attacks will only affect a small section of humanity. Of course, you wouldn't say that if you were related to someone who had been beheaded or blown up or murdered. But humanity is facing a very big, slow, long, drawn-out threat, and that is to do with the way the weather is changing and the size of the population.

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    David Attenborough

    Climate change will affect the whole of humanity, while terrorist attacks will only affect a small section of humanity. Of course, you wouldn't say that if you were related to someone who had been beheaded or blown up or murdered.

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    David Attenborough

    Crying wolf is a real danger.

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    David Attenborough

    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.

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    David Attenborough

    Do we really require so many gardening programmes, makeover programmes or celebrity chefs?

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    David Attenborough

    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?

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    David Attenborough

    Fundamentally not to waste energy. If we were all to reduce our demands for energy, it would make an enormous amount of difference.

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    David Attenborough

    Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when you got there it was the back of beyond. It was just a series of small tin sheds.

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    David Attenborough

    How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing.

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    David Attenborough

    Human beings, because we're so clever, have removed every single one of those population limiting factors... So nothing controls our increase in numbers except our own wish. Since I first started making television programs, the population of the world has increased three times. That's an extraordinary notion. Can it increase four times? Can it increase five times? The Earth is a finite size. So a point will eventually come when we run out of food, when we run out of space and when we will have destroyed most of the natural world. So ought we to do something about it before that happens?

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    David Attenborough

    Humanity is facing a very big, slow, long, drawn-out threat, and that is to do with the way the weather is changing and the size of the population.

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    David Attenborough

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

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    David Attenborough

    I believe the Abominable Snowman may be real. I think there may be something in that.

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    David Attenborough

    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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    David Attenborough

    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.

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    David Attenborough

    I don't approve of sunbathing, and it's bad for you.

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    David Attenborough

    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.

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    David Attenborough

    I don't run a car, have never run a car. I could say that this is because I have this extremely tender environmentalist conscience, but the fact is I hate driving.

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    David Attenborough

    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.

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    David Attenborough

    I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it.

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    David Attenborough

    If I can make programmes when I'm 95, that would be fine. But I would think I'll have had enough by then.

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    David Attenborough

    I find it far more awesome, wonderful, that creation; our appearance in the world; should be the culmination, or at least one of the latest products of 3,000 Million years of organic evolution, than a kind of country trick, taking a rib out of a man's side in a trance.

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    David Attenborough

    If I were beginning my career today, I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically, I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television, and I think if I were beginning today, I'd be there.

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    David Attenborough

    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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    David Attenborough

    If we and the rest of the back-boned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if the invertebrates were to disappear, the world's ecosystems would collapse

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    David Attenborough

    If we [humans] disappeared overnight, the world would probably be better off.

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    David Attenborough

    If we were all to reduce our demands for energy, it would make an enormous amount of difference.

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    David Attenborough

    If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation.

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    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.

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    David Attenborough

    I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population

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    David Attenborough

    I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.