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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

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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
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More quotes by David Attenborough

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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.
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I've been to Nepal, but I'd like to go to Tibet. It must be a wonderful place to go. I don't think there's anything there, but it would be a nice place to visit.
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I believe the Abominable Snowman may be real. I think there may be something in that.
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It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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It is curiosity, quite right-a divine curiosity. A characteristic of the gods is curiosity.
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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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All the modern devices we have enable us to investigate things and have enabled us to do better.
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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.
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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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Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist.
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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
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In the West, that's what's happening. The birth rate has been dropping steadily and still is. But there is still a vast amount of the world where that's not the case. And that is where the big population growth is taking place.
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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.
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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.
David Attenborough
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I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
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Cameramen are among the most extraordinarily able and competent people I know. They have to have an insight into natural history that gives them a sixth sense of what the creature is going to do, so they can be ready to follow.
David Attenborough