Top 100 Attenborough Quotes
#1. At the end of the day, the harsh reality is that if you're a fan of Kate Bush, Charles Dickens, Scrabble, David Attenborough and University Challenge, then there's not much out there for you in terms of a youth movement.
David Nicholls
#2. There is such a big chunk of me that is David Attenborough. I think he is my biggest inspiration.
Bjork
#3. The phrase "singular incredible life" seems to me that it applies more appropriately to Jane Goodall or David Attenborough, people I regard with awe and who stand for great humanism and knowledge.
Merrill Markoe
#4. The question is - did Richard Attenborough have a right to make 'Gandhi?' And did Danny Boyle have a right to make 'Slumdog Millionaire?' Quite honestly, if they didn't have the right to make these films, I had no right to make 'Elizabeth.'
Shekhar Kapur
#5. I'm a big fan of David Attenborough, who I think is the most adventurous of the nature program presenters.
Oona Chaplin
#6. I think that I altered history in 'Elizabeth,' and I interpreted history far more than Danny Boyle or Richard Attenborough did to 'Slumdog Millionaire' or 'Gandhi.' They took Indian novels or Indian characters and very much stayed within the Indian diaspora.
Shekhar Kapur
#7. When I see David Attenborough talking about how chimps live, big apes, I just remember my dad and the way he'd look at you. He couldn't speak, but everything else about him was, 'This is us, a family.' Relationships are just as intense as they are for people who can speak. Probably more so.
Richard Griffiths
#8. When Attenborough asked me to do Gandhi it was almost like stepping off one boat and stepping on to another, even though both boats are going at 60 miles per hour.
Ben Kingsley
#9. David Attenborough ... has that wonderful, breathy voice, and he's always so fascinated by what he's seeing. There's nothing about him that I can't find attractive.
Jane Birkin
#10. What about volcanoes?"
"What about them?"
"All that lava comes up from center of the earth where it is all hot. I saw a program, it had David Attenborough, so it's true.
Neil Gaiman
#11. When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I'll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by 'National Geographic' or work with David Attenborough, but it didn't happen. I became a model.
Isabella Rossellini
#12. The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.
David Attenborough
#15. 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
#16. Pier Angeli was in the movie called Sea of Sand that Guy Green directed where this idea came up.
Richard Attenborough
#17. No one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experiened
David Attenborough
#18. An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.
David Attenborough
#19. David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.
Richard Attenborough
#20. The more you go on, the less you need people standing between you and the animal and the camera waving their arms about.
David Attenborough
#21. 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
#22. 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
#24. Its about cherishing the woodland at the bottom of your garden or the stream that runs through it. It affects every aspect of life.
David Attenborough
#25. It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
David Attenborough
#27. Life is not all high emotion. Some of the most interesting things are when its not highly emotional: little details of relationships and body language.
David Attenborough
#28. 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.
David Attenborough
#29. Apart from anything else, I am designed by evolution, like we all are: if we see a little thing like that, big eyes, tiny nose, we go 'aaah'. That's what evolution does. We are programmed to do that. So to find babies the most amazing, isn't surprising, I don't think.
David Attenborough
#30. What humans do over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all life on the planet.
David Attenborough
#31. I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.
David Attenborough
#33. If we [humans] disappeared overnight, the world would probably be better off.
David Attenborough
#34. Trade is a proper and decent relationship, with dignity and respect on both sides.
David Attenborough
#35. 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
#37. I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.
David Attenborough
#38. There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.
David Attenborough
#39. What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.
David Attenborough
#41. 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
#42. I believe the Abominable Snowman may be real. I think there may be something in that.
David Attenborough
#43. 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
#44. I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.
Richard Attenborough
#45. I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
David Attenborough
#46. You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
David Attenborough
#47. The notion of ever more old people needing ever more young people, who in turn will grow old and need ever more young people and so on, ad infinitum, is an obvious ecological Ponzi scheme.
David Attenborough
#48. The correct scientific response to something that is not understood must always be to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a supernatural cause.
David Attenborough
#49. I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.
David Attenborough
#50. I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.
Richard Attenborough
#51. The World is full of wonders, but they become more Wonderful, not less Wonderful when Science looks at them.
David Attenborough
#52. It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.
David Attenborough
#53. It is curiosity, quite right-a divine curiosity. A characteristic of the gods is curiosity.
David Attenborough
#54. The idea that the Lord had given us a present, that the world is a gift from God ... well, the amount of stuff, back then, that the Lord was giving away was limited. We do not have dominion.
David Attenborough
#57. If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.
Richard Attenborough
#58. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment
David Attenborough
#59. It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.
David Attenborough
#60. If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation.
David Attenborough
#62. I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work.
David Attenborough
#63. All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life
David Attenborough
#64. And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.
Richard Attenborough
#65. I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.
Richard Attenborough
#66. Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about.
Richard Attenborough
#67. Bringing nature into the classroom can kindle a fascination and passion for the diversity of life on earth and can motivate a sense of responsibility to safeguard it.
David Attenborough
#68. Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes thought of as primitive, dull and dimwitted. In fact, of course, they can be lethally fast, spectacularly beautiful, surprisingly affectionate and very sophisticated.
David Attenborough
#69. When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years.
David Attenborough
#70. And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.
Richard Attenborough
#71. I don't run a car, have never run a car. I could say that this is because I have this extremely tender environmentalist conscience, but the fact is I hate driving.
David Attenborough
#72. 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.
David Attenborough
#73. 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
#74. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist.
David Attenborough
#76. What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.
Richard Attenborough
#77. Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
David Attenborough
#78. Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when you got there it was the back of beyond. It was just a series of small tin sheds.
David Attenborough
#79. You can cry about death and very properly so, your own as well as anybody else's. But it's inevitable, so you'd better grapple with it and cope and be aware that not only is it inevitable, but it has always been inevitable, if you see what I mean.
David Attenborough
#80. It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it.
David Attenborough
#83. 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
#84. I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to promote myself. These days there's far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won't be lost.
David Attenborough
#85. I'm no longer sceptical. I no longer have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world.
David Attenborough
#86. People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.
David Attenborough
#87. Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough
#88. 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
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too.
Richard Attenborough
#93. 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
#95. We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense; we've got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven't done is developed our technology.
David Attenborough
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. In the Baboon community, it is not how strong you are that is important, but who you know that counts
David Attenborough
#99. 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.
David Attenborough
#100. The savage, rocky shores of Christmas Island, 200 miles south of Java, in the Indian Ocean. It's November, the moon is in its third quarter, and the sun is just setting. In a few hours from now, on this very shore, a thousand million lives will be launched.
David Attenborough
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