David Attenborough Quotes - Page 3

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

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

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

Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes thought of as primitive, dull and dimwitted. In fact, of course, they can be lethally fast, spectacularly beautiful, surprisingly affectionate and very sophisticated.

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

We can now manipulate images to such an extrodinary extent that there's no lie you cannot tell.

One in eight plant species face extinction.

As far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then He chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world... which doesn't seem to me to be necessarily blasphemous at all.

The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrollable way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us and it is the poor people of the world who will suffer most

The only acceptable way to solve ecological problems is if you can persuade people to have fewer children. In the Victorian times, there were families of 15 children. Someone like Edward Lear, he was the last of 21 children. And so what we have to think about is offering people the alternative choice. And in the West, that's what's happening. The birth rate has been dropping steadily and still is. I'm wanting human beings to be better off so they don't view children as an insurance for the future.

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.

Birds are the most accomplished aeronauts the world has ever seen. They fly high and low, at great speed, and very slowly. And always with extraordinary precision and control.

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. But humanity is facing a very big, slow, long, drawn-out threat, and that is to do with the way the weather is changing and the size of the population.

When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years.

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.

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

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

It's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.

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

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.

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

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.

No, not a feminist. I'm a humanist. I'm neither one side nor the other.

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

The fundamental issue is the moral issue.