Attenborough Quotes & Sayings

I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population — David Attenborough

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

I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse. — David Attenborough

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

When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I'll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by 'National Geographic' or work with David Attenborough, but it didn't happen. I became a model. — Isabella Rossellini

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

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

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

You've got to be fairly solemn [about the environment]. I mean the mere notion that there are three times as many people on Earth as there were when I started making television. How can the Earth accommodate them? When people, including politicians, set their faces against looking at the consequences-it's just unbelievable that anyone could ignore it. — David Attenborough

Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist. — David Attenborough

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

Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that. — David Attenborough

I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage. — David Attenborough

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

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. — David Attenborough

How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing. — David Attenborough

Wallace would have none of it. In reviewing The Descent of Man he wrote, 'Are we to believe that the actions of an ever varying fancy for a slight change of colour could produce and fix the definite colours and markings which actually characterise species?' Furthermore, he said, it was unacceptable to suggest that birds had an aesthetic sense. That would be crediting a bird with a human characteristic for which there was no evidence. It would be anthropomorphism at its most unjustified. — David Attenborough

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

I don't blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask that they pay for them. — Richard Attenborough

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

In the Baboon community, it is not how strong you are that is important, but who you know that counts — David Attenborough

We really need to kick the carbon habit and stop making our energy from burning things. Climate change is also really important. You can wreck one rainforest then move, drain one area of resources and move onto another, but climate change is global. — David Attenborough

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

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

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

At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too. — Richard Attenborough

What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit. — Richard Attenborough

I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero. — Richard Attenborough

There's a small worm called Loa Loa Filariasis. This parasite can survive in one environment exclusively- namely, underneath the skin and inside the eyes of human beings. Children and the elderly in tropical regions (usually the poorest) are the most widely affected. A painful, slow death is virtually certain. The worm can actually live in the host for 17 years before the host finally dies. — David Attenborough

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. — David Attenborough

The phrase "singular incredible life" seems to me that it applies more appropriately to Jane Goodall or David Attenborough, people I regard with awe and who stand for great humanism and knowledge. — Merrill Markoe

I'm not in politics. — David Attenborough

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

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. — David Attenborough

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

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

Natural history is not about producing fables. — David Attenborough

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 — David Attenborough

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

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. — David Attenborough

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

To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't believe that. — David Attenborough

All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life — David Attenborough

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. — David Attenborough

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

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. — David Attenborough

If you are directing, you have the opportunity to put your signature on the bottom of the frame. You have the opportunity to say, "This is what I believe. That is my credo. That is what I wish to state." — Richard Attenborough

Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious. — David Attenborough

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. — David Attenborough

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. — David Attenborough

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

David Attenborough ... has that wonderful, breathy voice, and he's always so fascinated by what he's seeing. There's nothing about him that I can't find attractive. — Jane Birkin

I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view. — Richard Attenborough

The idea that the Lord had given us a present, that the world is a gift from God ... well, the amount of stuff, back then, that the Lord was giving away was limited. We do not have dominion. — David Attenborough

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

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

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

Our first point of discussion is the hunt. ( ... ) My idea is to start the film with an image of the vixen locked out of her lair which has been plugged up. Her terror as she's pursued across the country. This is a big deal. It means training a fox from birth or dressing up a dog to look like a fox. Or hiring David Attenbrorough, who probably knows a few foxes well enough to ask a favour. — Emma Thompson

There is a scene in Richard Attenborough's biopic where Gandhi argues with his wife because she refuses to clean their latrine. She says it is the work of untouchables; he tells her there is no such thing. Gandhi's tactics of encouraging brotherly love across caste boundaries and urging Indians to clean their own latrines had failed miserably. — Rose George

There is such a big chunk of me that is David Attenborough. I think he is my biggest inspiration. — Bjork

That people will object very much to seeing a predator killing its prey, and yet, in the news, will accept showing shots of people shooting one another. — David Attenborough

I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something. — Richard Attenborough

No one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experiened — David Attenborough

Human beings, because we're so clever, have removed every single one of those population limiting factors ... So nothing controls our increase in numbers except our own wish. Since I first started making television programs, the population of the world has increased three times. That's an extraordinary notion. Can it increase four times? Can it increase five times? The Earth is a finite size. So a point will eventually come when we run out of food, when we run out of space and when we will have destroyed most of the natural world. So ought we to do something about it before that happens? — David Attenborough

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. — David Attenborough

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

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

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

I was on my own union council for twenty-odd years. — Richard Attenborough

[W]hen we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather ... What people (must) do is to change their behavior and their attitudes ... If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something. — David Attenborough

In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie. — Richard Attenborough

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

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

Trade is a proper and decent relationship, with dignity and respect on both sides. — David Attenborough

One in eight plant species face extinction. — David Attenborough

I think we have got to start again and go right back to first principles. The argument I shall advance, surprising as it may seem coming from the author of the earlier chapters, is that, for an understanding of the evolution of modern man, we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution. If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? ... Is he manuvering to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings? — Richard Dawkins

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. — David Attenborough

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

I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject. — Richard Attenborough

Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife? — David Attenborough

If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation. — David Attenborough

If we [humans] disappeared overnight, the world would probably be better off. — David Attenborough

I'd like to see the giant squid. Nobody has ever seen one. I could tell you people who have spent thousands and thousands of pounds trying to see giant squid. I mean, we know they exist because we have seen dead ones. But I have never seen a living one. Nor has anybody else. — David Attenborough

Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone. — Richard Attenborough

Crying wolf is a real danger. — David Attenborough

I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived. — Richard Attenborough

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

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

I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [ ... ] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it. — David Attenborough

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. — David Attenborough

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

We can now destroy or we can cherish-the choice is ours. — David Attenborough

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. — David Attenborough

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay. — Richard Attenborough

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

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. — David Attenborough

David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e., that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali. — Douglas Adams

Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about. — Richard Attenborough

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

I've been bitten by a python. Not a very big one. I was being silly, saying: 'Oh, it's not poisonous ... ' Then, wallop! But you have fear around animals. — David Attenborough