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Nothing in the natural world makes sense - except when seen in the light of evolution

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
Seen
Natural
Sense
Makes
Light
Nothing
World
Evolution
Except

More quotes by David Attenborough

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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.
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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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You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
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I find it far more awesome, wonderful, that creation our appearance in the world should be the culmination, or at least one of the latest products of 3,000 Million years of organic evolution, than a kind of country trick, taking a rib out of a man's side in a trance.
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You'll find people where their conditions aren't changing in any way, its rather rare for them to be happy.
David Attenborough
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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
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I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
David Attenborough
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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.
David Attenborough
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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
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All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.
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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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
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You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.
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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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
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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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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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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.
David Attenborough
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Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God.
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.
David Attenborough