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

David Attenborough

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David Attenborough
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: May 8
Actor
Autobiographer
Biologist
Broadcaster
Director
Environmentalist
Film Director
Journalist
Naturalist
Presenter
Screenwriter
London
England
Sir David Attenborough
David Frederick Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough
Appalling
Steer
Steers
Mislead
Courses
Course
Time
People
Misleading

More quotes by David Attenborough

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It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.
David Attenborough
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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
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How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing.
David Attenborough
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Dealing with global warming doesn't mean we have all got to suddenly stop breathing. Dealing with global warming means that we have to stop waste, and if you travel for no reason whatsoever, that is a waste.
David Attenborough
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You'll discover in countries where women have control over their own bodies, where they have education, where they have birth control, where they have facilities and where they are literate, when those things happen, the birth rate falls.
David Attenborough
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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.
David Attenborough
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All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life
David Attenborough
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Climate change will affect the whole of humanity, while terrorist attacks will only affect a small section of humanity. Of course, you wouldn't say that if you were related to someone who had been beheaded or blown up or murdered.
David Attenborough
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I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population
David Attenborough
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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
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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
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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
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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
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People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.
David Attenborough
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I am an ardent recycler. I would like to think that it works. I don't know whether it does or not.
David Attenborough
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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
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Terrorism is an immediate problem that people are very concerned about, and I am as concerned about that as anyone else. But it isn't an either or situation.
David Attenborough
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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
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The notion of ever more old people needing ever more young people, who will in turn grow old and need even more young people, and so on ad infinitum, is an obvious ecological Ponzi scheme.
David Attenborough
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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