Quotes from David Attenborough

I believe the Abominable Snowman may be real. I think there may be something in that.

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.

If I can bicycle, I bicycle.

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.

I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival.

People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature.

Nature isn't positive in that way. It doesn't aim itself at you. It's not being unkind to you.

I'm not in politics.

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.

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.