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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

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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
Animals
Irwin
Aren
Stunts
Respect
Treating
Animal
Steve
Wonderful
Conservation
Even
Viewers
Work
Uncomfortable
Aware

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Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.
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Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever increasing population. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.
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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.
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I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.
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You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
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I would love to see a giant squid. Very few people have seen them. And only about half a dozen people have seen one alive.
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The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.
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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
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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.
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Its about cherishing the woodland at the bottom of your garden or the stream that runs through it. It affects every aspect of life.
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The reverse side of the coin in having this extraordinary ability to go anywhere, is that no one anywhere is remote any more.
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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.
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Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife?
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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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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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There are perfectly good independent small nations.
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People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.
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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.
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We can now manipulate images to such an extrodinary extent that there's no lie you cannot tell.
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Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936, and it was a monopoly, and there was only one broadcaster and it operated on a license which is not the same as a government grant.
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