David Attenborough

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.

Young people: They care. They know that this is the world that they're going to grow up in, that they're going to spend the rest of their lives in. But, I think it's more idealistic than that. They actually believe that humanity, human species, has no right to destroy and despoil regardless.

I don__ know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, __hy don__ you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?_ And I always say, well, when you say that, you__e also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that__ got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate_

Now, over half of us live in an urban environment. My home, too, is here in the city of London. Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape the surface of our planet is very striking. It__ also very sobering, and reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world.Yet it__ on this connection that the future of both humanity and the natural world will depend. And surely, it is our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.

__sing 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.

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.

All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.

There is no question that climate change is happening the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.

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.

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.

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.

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement the greatest source of visual beauty the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

I think a major element of jetlag is psychological. Nobody ever tells me what time it is at home.

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.

Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.

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.

An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.

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.