David Attenborough Quotes

Sentimentalising is anathema, as far as I am concerned. It leads you into ethical problems about violence and killing and eating meat. The whole world becomes topsy-survy if you impose moralities that were evolved within human society on what a blowfly or what a parasite does... there are lots of emotions you can deduce from an animal's behaviour that are correct, but when you start saying it's feeling guilty or thinking or a loved one or mourning, you must be very careful of those feelings.

I remember when we were in the World Cup in Australia and I had to win the singles against Tony Payne, best of seven legs, to win it. I was 2-0 down but ended up beating him I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival.

Nature isn't positive in that way. It doesn't aim itself at you. It's not being unkind to you.

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

I'm not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them.

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

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.

There are perfectly good independent small nations.

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.

An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment...

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.

The correct scientific response to something that is not understood must always be to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a supernatural cause.

It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it.

I'm no longer sceptical. I no longer have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world.

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

Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.

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

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.

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

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.

Terrorism is an immediate problem that people are very concerned about, and I am as concerned about that as anyone else. But it isn't an either or situation.

You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you're talking about.

I would love to see a giant squid. Very few people have seen them. And only about half a dozen people have seen one alive.

That people will object very much to seeing a predator killing its prey, and yet, in the news, will accept showing shots of people shooting one another.

The more you go on, the less you need people standing between you and the animal and the camera waving their arms about.

Its about cherishing the woodland at the bottom of your garden or the stream that runs through it. It affects every aspect of life.

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.

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

Since when has Finland been a rotten place to live in?

I'm luckier than my grandfather, who didn't move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.

I think a major element of jetlag is psychological. Nobody ever tells me what time it is at home.

The World is full of wonders, but they become more Wonderful, not less Wonderful when Science looks at them.

It's extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, 'tell us about us', 'tell us about the first human being'. We are so self-obsessed with our own history. There is so much more out there than what connects to us.

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.

If I can bicycle, I bicycle.

To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't believe that.

There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.

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

I suppose happiness is something one enjoys, but I suspect that happiness is not a state but rather a transition.

You've got to be fairly solemn [about the environment]. I mean the mere notion that there are three times as many people on Earth as there were when I started making television. How can the Earth accommodate them? When people, including politicians, set their faces against looking at the consequences-it's just unbelievable that anyone could ignore it.

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

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.

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

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.

In the old days... it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn't have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes, I didn't use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.

They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.

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.

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?