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.

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

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.

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.

All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.

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.

It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.