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" 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. "

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" Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are. "

David Attenborough

Respect

Animals

You

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

" 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. "

" Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

Hope

Give

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird? "

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

" We are a plague on the Earth. "

David Attenborough

Earth

Plague

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Being in touch with the natural world is crucial. "

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

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

David Attenborough

Know

I Am

" 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. "

" Natural history is not about producing fables. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you're talking about. "

" 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. "