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" 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

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

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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. "

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" 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. "

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

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really. "

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

" 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. "

David Attenborough

" 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. "

David Attenborough

" It's extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, 'tell us about us', 'tell us about the first human being'. We are so self-obsessed with our own history. There is so much more out there than what connects to us. "

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" 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. "

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" If I can bicycle, I bicycle. "

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

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" We are a plague on the Earth. "

David Attenborough

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

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. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

David Attenborough

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

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

" Apart from anything else, I am designed by evolution, like we all are: if we see a little thing like that, big eyes, tiny nose, we go 'aaah'. That's what evolution does. We are programmed to do that. So to find babies the most amazing, isn't surprising, I don't think. "

David Attenborough

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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