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What humans do over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all life on the planet.

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
Planets
Fate
Next
Humans
Years
Life
Determine
Planet

More quotes by 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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As far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then He chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world... which doesn't seem to me to be necessarily blasphemous at all.
David Attenborough
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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.
David Attenborough
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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.
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
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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.
David Attenborough
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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
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Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough
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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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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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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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I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.
David Attenborough
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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
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People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.
David Attenborough
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All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.
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'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
David Attenborough
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Can a growing human population still leave space for wildlife?
David Attenborough
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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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Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a co-ordinated view about the planet, it's going to get worse and worse.
David Attenborough