David Attenborough famous quotes

The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.
-- David Attenborough

#Nature #Air #Water

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Giving Up #Looks #Causes

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

#Travel #Wish #Half

The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?
-- David Attenborough

#Book #Grandchildren #Elephants

People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.
-- David Attenborough

#Animal #Thinking #People

Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
-- David Attenborough

#Real #Our Society #Economics

I don’t know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate…
-- David Attenborough

#Atheist #Believe #Butterfly

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

#Nature #Earth Day #Understanding

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
-- David Attenborough

#Animal #Ecosystems #World

The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. Many individuals are doing what they can, but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies and our economics and in our politics. I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer. Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy, inhabitable by all species
-- David Attenborough

#Real #Future #Responsibility

I'm not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pat them, but I am intoxicated by animals.
-- David Attenborough

#Nice #Mean #Animal

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

#Australia #Suffering #Three

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

#Travel #Order #Navy

I'm absolutely strict about it. When I land, I put my watch right, and I don't care what I feel like, I will go to bed at half past eleven. If that means going to bed early or late, that's what I live by. As soon as you get there, live by that time.
-- David Attenborough

#Travel #Mean #Past

Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment
-- David Attenborough

#Survival #Population #Benefits

Opponents say natural selection is not a theory supported by observation or experiment; that it is not based on fact; and that it cannot be proved. Well, no, you cannot prove the theory to people who won't believe in it any more than you can prove that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. However, we know the battle happened then, just as we know the course of evolution on earth unambiguously shows that Darwin was right.
-- David Attenborough

#Believe #People #Battle

‎Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever increasing population. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.
-- David Attenborough

#Successful #Survival #Mammals

I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.
-- David Attenborough

#Atmosphere #Growth #Balance

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Country #Travel #Mean

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.
-- David Attenborough

#Travel #Animal #Order

This last chapter .. may have given the impression that somehow man is the ultimate triumph of evolution, that all these millions of years of development have had no purpose other than to put him on earth. There is no scientific evidence whatever to support such a view and no reason to suppose that our stay here will be any more permanent than that of the dinosaur.
-- David Attenborough

#Men #Views #Years

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Animal #Way #Environment

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Sweat #Tin #Hell

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Running #Hate #Car

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

#Animal #Different #Alive

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Moving #Scuba #Three

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

#Travel #Home #Journey

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

#Beautiful #People #Important

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Beauty #Nature #Earth Day

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

#Stars #Two #Care

If I can bicycle, I bicycle.
-- David Attenborough

#Cycling #Bicycle

No one will protect what they don't care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced.
-- David Attenborough

#Care #Protect

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Country #Men #Years

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.
-- David Attenborough

#People #Giving #Able

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Beautiful #Children #Mean

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Self #People #Goes On

Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936, and it was a monopoly, and there was only one broadcaster and it operated on a license which is not the same as a government grant.
-- David Attenborough

#Government #Television #Monopoly

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

#Thinking #Challenges #Doubt

Life is not all high emotion. Some of the most interesting things are when its not highly emotional: little details of relationships and body language.
-- David Attenborough

#Emotional #Interesting #Details

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

#Animal

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Animal #Thinking #Mourning

What humans do over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all life on the planet.
-- David Attenborough

#Fate #Years #Next

One in eight plant species face extinction.
-- David Attenborough

#Eight #Environmental #Extinction

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Children #Book #Reading

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

#Rotten #Finland #Places To Live

There are perfectly good independent small nations.
-- David Attenborough

#Independent

It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.
-- David Attenborough

#Believe #Two #Historical

The reverse side of the coin in having this extraordinary ability to go anywhere, is that no one anywhere is remote any more.
-- David Attenborough

#Sides #Coins #Ability

It never really occurred to me to believe in God.
-- David Attenborough

#Believe #Believe In God

Nothing in the natural world makes sense - except when seen in the light of evolution
-- David Attenborough

#Light #World #Evolution

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Nature #Passion #Responsibility

Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God.
-- David Attenborough

#God #Difficult #Notion

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

#Running #Garden #Cherish

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Taken #Years #Sea

People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.
-- David Attenborough

#Land #People #Doom

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.
-- David Attenborough

#Running #Sitting #Half

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

#Animal #People #Cameras

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

#Appreciate #Sunbathing

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

#Moving #Grandfather #Village

I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.
-- David Attenborough

#Interesting #World #Fortune

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

#Thinking #Would Be #Had Enough

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

#Museums #Library #World

Natural history is not about producing fables.
-- David Attenborough

#Fables #Natural

I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work.
-- David Attenborough

#Animal #Trying #Interest

The climate, the economic situation, rising birth rates; none of these things give me a lot of hope or reason to be optimistic.
-- David Attenborough

#Optimistic #Giving #Climate

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

#Real #Believe #Thinking

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

#People #Environmental #Population