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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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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
Nothing
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World
Grandchildren
Happenings
Happening
Knew
Eye
Look
More quotes by David Attenborough
Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
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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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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.
David Attenborough
Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife?
David Attenborough
Fundamentally not to waste energy. If we were all to reduce our demands for energy, it would make an enormous amount of difference.
David Attenborough
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
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've never actually met one in the wild, but I have seen a king cobra. They go towards people, they rear up six feet tall and they're very aggressive and they are very fast. And one bite means certain death. So if I encountered a king cobra in the wild I would be very alarmed.
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We really need to kick the carbon habit and stop making our energy from burning things. Climate change is also really important. You can wreck one rainforest then move, drain one area of resources and move onto another, but climate change is global.
David Attenborough
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.
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
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
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
It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.
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
I would love to go and see the Himalayan Mountain Kingdoms. There are very few left now. I would loved to have gone to Tibet and Nepal. And there are still parts of central Asia that are utterly unexplored.
David Attenborough
Humanity is facing a very big, slow, long, drawn-out threat, and that is to do with the way the weather is changing and the size of the population.
David Attenborough
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
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
It never really occurred to me to believe in God.
David Attenborough