Quotes By David Attenborough

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

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.

You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Natural history is not about producing fables.

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.

Being in touch with the natural world is crucial.

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.

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

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.

If I can bicycle, I bicycle.

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

It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.