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

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

David Attenborough

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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'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

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

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

Natural history is not about producing fables.

David Attenborough

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

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

David Attenborough Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Natural history is not about producing fables.

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

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.