David Attenborough
David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FLS FZS FSA is an English broadcaster and naturalist...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionTV Show Host
Date of Birth8 May 1926
CityIsleworth, England
capacity guilt thinking time
Oh, my capacity for guilt is enormous. I'm all the time thinking I'm not doing the things I should be doing, not doing enough of it, or I said I'd be vice-president of something or other, and what I have I done? Nothing.
amazingly gone last living places possibly privileged
I mean, one is living an amazingly privileged life. It's only been the last 20 or so years that one could have possibly gone to all the places you and I go to.
change regard
Things change... I don't think we should regard change as a disaster.
environmental example hardly richmond
I'm especially involved, for example, in the Richmond Environmental Centre. That's one of those things you can hardly say no to.
arm bbc joined money rather regarded service television
I joined the BBC as a trainee. At first, the television service had no money and it was regarded as a rather raffish arm of the BBC.
company easy environmental oil setting spit sure
It's very easy to say everything is outrageous. But if you have an oil company that's setting up its own environmental department, for example, what do you do? Do you spit in its eye, or do you make sure that what they do actually has some substance?
middle ways
When I was right in the middle of Borneo, you thought you were in a different world. There was no radio, no ways of communicating.
clear course economists europe join north people reasons scotland themselves time wales yes
People say we have all got to join Europe for reasons which even the economists themselves aren't clear on-at the same time we're saying, well yes of course Scotland has got to be independent. And why don't we make Wales independent too? And the north of England.
cockpit fellow funny last sat therefore travelled trip
My last trip was to the States, and on the way back I sat in the cockpit for take-off and landing. In a funny way, I think aircrew know that I've travelled a lot and therefore feel we are fellow professionals to some degree-which is nice, very complimentary.
advantage issue moral neither
Neither have I said we have got to do this because of some pharmaceutical advantage there may or may not be. The moral issue is that we should not impoverish this world.
curiosity divine characteristics
It is curiosity, quite right-a divine curiosity. A characteristic of the gods is curiosity.
mean people three
You've got to be fairly solemn [about the environment]. I mean the mere notion that there are three times as many people on Earth as there were when I started making television. How can the Earth accommodate them? When people, including politicians, set their faces against looking at the consequences-it's just unbelievable that anyone could ignore it.
heart thinking worry
I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it.
decision environment natural
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.