David Attenborough Quotes

[African Rift Valley soda lakes]. Steaming-hot water comes from volcanic springs and is so loaded with soda that around the margins of the lake it solidifies into white curds. Yet flamingos come here in thousands. [...] The fact that so few creatures can tolerate these conditions means that any animal that can, has the place to itself and so can proliferate in vast numbers.

To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see.

This City in Ukraine was once Home to almost 50 thousand people. It had everything a community would need for a comfortable life. But on the 26th of April 1986, it suddenly became uninhabitable. The nearby Nuclear Power Station of Chernobyl exploded. And less than in 48 hours the city was evacuated. No one has lived here since

Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes seen as simple, primitive creatures. That's a long way from the truth. The fact that they are solar-powered means that their bodies require only 10% of the energy that mammals of a similar size require. At a time when we ourselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which we get our energy from the environment and the wasteful way in which we use it, maybe there are things that we can learn from "life in cold blood."

I can't pretend that I got involved with filming the natural world fifty years ago because I had some great banner to carry about conservation - not at all, I always had a huge pleasure in just watching the natural world and seeing what happens. - I made those films because it was a hugely enjoyable thing to do. But as I went on making them it became more and more apparent that the creatures that were giving me so much joy were under threat. The fun is in delighting in the animals but if you do that you owe them something so you have an obligation to speak out and to do what you can to protect them. m3s08-m4s05

But for Hatzegopteryx, the beach is a launching pad. Now his wings will carry him to yet another forest, where life proliferates more variously and more abundantly, than anywhere else on our prehistoric planet.

[The Kiwi.] It's the bird equivalent of a badger.

Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. I look at these images now and I realize that, although as a young man I felt I was out there in the wild experiencing the untouched natural world... it was an illusion. Those forests and plains and seas were already emptying.

Today we're living in an era in which the biggest threat to human well-being, to other species and to the Earth as we know it might well be ourselves. The issue of population size is always controversial because it touches on the most personal decisions we make, but we ignore it at our peril. m0s50-m1-13

To many of us, however, this is the most delectable of natural sounds. It's an hour before dawn, it's spring, this is an English woodland. All around, the dawn chorus. It's so familiar that perhaps we take it for granted.

Trade is a proper and decent relationship, with dignity and respect on both sides.

As the last thermals of summer start to rise, the birds [hawks and vultures] circle up to great heights, 10,000 feet or more, to give themselves a good start for the long journey ahead. As they glide southwards, slowly losing height, they will look for another thermal and make for its base so that, once again, they will be lifted high enough to reach the next.

Midwinter, and the countryside is so still, it seems almost lifeless. But these trees and bushes and grasses around me are living organisms just like animals. And they have to face very much the same sort of problems as animals face throughout their lives if they're to survive. They have to fight one another, they have to compete for mates, they have to invade new territories. But the reason that we're seldom aware of these dramas is that plants of course live on a different time-scale.

Sensing the approaching danger, the snail flees. But in a world of snail paces, the conch is something of a Ferrari. It calls for desperate measures. Exhausted by the effort of its last-ditch attempt, the tulip snail is slowly... gunned... down.

Our imprint is now truly global. Our impact now truly profound. Our blind assault on the planet has finally come to alter the very fundamentals of the living world.