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.

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.

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

The savage, rocky shores of Christmas Island, 200 miles south of Java, in the Indian Ocean. It's November, the moon is in its third quarter, and the sun is just setting. In a few hours from now, on this very shore, a thousand million lives will be launched.

London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.

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.

There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive.