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" 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

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" An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment. "

David Attenborough

" 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. "

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

" 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

" Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when you got there it was the back of beyond. It was just a series of small tin sheds. "

David Attenborough

" 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. "

David Attenborough

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

David Attenborough

" What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it. "

David Attenborough

" I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work. "

David Attenborough

" 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. "

David 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

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

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

" 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. "

David Attenborough

" 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

" It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it. "

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

" There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it. "

David Attenborough

" 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. "

David Attenborough

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

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

" 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? "

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

" 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

" 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

" We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense; we've got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven't done is developed our technology. "

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

" People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile. "

David Attenborough

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

David Attenborough

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

David Attenborough