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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.

David Attenborough

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David Attenborough
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: May 8
Actor
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Biologist
Broadcaster
Director
Environmentalist
Film Director
Journalist
Naturalist
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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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What humans do over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all life on the planet.
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The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I suppose happiness is something one enjoys, but I suspect that happiness is not a state but rather a transition.
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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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Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.
David Attenborough
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Terrorism is an immediate problem that people are very concerned about, and I am as concerned about that as anyone else. But it isn't an either or situation.
David Attenborough
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The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.
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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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There are perfectly good independent small nations.
David Attenborough
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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
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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.
David Attenborough
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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
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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
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London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.
David Attenborough
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I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.
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