Top 77 David Attenborough Quotes

Words matter. These are the best David Attenborough Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilt

Well, I’m having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough
It’s extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, ‘tell us about us’, ‘tell us about the first human being’. We are so self-obsessed with our own history. There is so much more out there than what connects to us.
David Attenborough
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
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
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
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
I’m against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
David Attenborough
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
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
There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.
David Attenborough
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
All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder – and ultimately impossible to solve – with ever more people.
David Attenborough
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
People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.
David Attenborough
Nature isn’t positive in that way. It doesn’t aim itself at you. It’s not being unkind to you.
David Attenborough
The climate, the economic situation, rising birth rates; none of these things give me a lot of hope or reason to be optimistic.
David Attenborough
You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you’re talking about.
David Attenborough
I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.
David Attenborough
We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves – and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.
David Attenborough
It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.
David Attenborough
Natural history is not about producing fables.
David Attenborough
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
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
I think we’re lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.
David Attenborough
I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.
David Attenborough
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
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
I’m not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pat them, but I am intoxicated by animals.
David Attenborough
I believe the Abominable Snowman may be real. I think there may be something in that.
David Attenborough
The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there’s a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants.
David Attenborough
I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival.
David Attenborough
All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowl

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
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
In the old days… it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn’t have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes, I didn’t use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.
David Attenborough
You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.
David Attenborough
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
People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.
David Attenborough
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
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
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
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
The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?
David Attenborough
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
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
I believe the Abominable Snowman may be real. I think there may be something in that.
David Attenborough
All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder – and ultimately impossible to solve – with ever more people.
David Attenborough
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
Well, I’m having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
David Attenborough
Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious.
David Attenborough
I think a major element of jetlag is psychological. Nobody ever tells me what time it is at home.
David Attenborough
I am an ardent recycler. I would like to think that it works. I don’t know whether it does or not.
David Attenborough
The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
David Attenborough
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
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