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Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife?
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
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Screenwriter
London
England
Sir David Attenborough
David Frederick Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough
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Human
Humans
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More quotes by David Attenborough
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.
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
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
I don't like rats, but there's not much else I don't like. The problem with rats is they have no fear of human beings, they're loaded with foul diseases, they would run the place given half the chance, and I've had them leap out of a lavatory while I've been sitting on it.
David Attenborough
Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.
David Attenborough
They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.
David Attenborough
It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.
David Attenborough
If I can make programmes when I'm 95, that would be fine. But I would think I'll have had enough by then.
David Attenborough
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
I suppose happiness is something one enjoys, but I suspect that happiness is not a state but rather a transition.
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
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
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
Since when has Finland been a rotten place to live in?
David Attenborough
The reverse side of the coin in having this extraordinary ability to go anywhere, is that no one anywhere is remote any more.
David Attenborough
You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
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
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.
David Attenborough
The most extraordinary thing about trying to piece together the missing links in the evolutionary story is that when you do find a missing link and put it in the story, you suddenly need all these other missing links to connect to the new discovery. The gaps and questions actually increase - it's extraordinary.
David Attenborough
What humans do over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all life on the planet.
David Attenborough