David Attenborough Quotes - Page 6

In the West, that's what's happening. The birth rate has been dropping steadily and still is. But there is still a vast amount of the world where that's not the case. And that is where the big population growth is taking place.

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

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

Nature isn't positive in that way. It doesn't aim itself at you. It's not being unkind to you.

I am an ardent recycler. I would like to think that it works. I don't know whether it does or not.

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.

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.

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

The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.

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

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

Warm-bloodedness is one of the key factors that have enabled mammals to conquer the Earth, and to develop the most complex bodies in the animal kingdom. In this series, we will travel the world to discover just how varied and how astonishing mammals are.

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

If I were beginning my career today, I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically, I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television, and I think if I were beginning today, I'd be there.

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.

I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.

You'll find people where their conditions aren't changing in any way, its rather rare for them to be happy.

I think the most alarming animals I have encountered are really poisonous snakes.

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.

In the old days... it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn't have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes, I didn't use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.

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

You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.

I'm a humanist. I'm neither one side nor the other.

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