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
years doing-nothing size
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.
home years space
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.
jobs adventure years
I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to promote myself. These days there's far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won't be lost.
years environmental policy
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.
taken years sea
Birds were flying from continent to continent long before we were. They reached the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica, long before we did. They can survive in the hottest of deserts. Some can remain on the wing for years at a time. They can girdle the globe. Now, we have taken over the earth and the sea and the sky, but with skill and care and knowledge, we can ensure that there is still a place on Earth for birds in all their beauty and variety - if we want to... And surely, we should.
country men years
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.
men views years
This last chapter .. may have given the impression that somehow man is the ultimate triumph of evolution, that all these millions of years of development have had no purpose other than to put him on earth. There is no scientific evidence whatever to support such a view and no reason to suppose that our stay here will be any more permanent than that of the dinosaur.
boys years levels
When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years.
fate years next
What humans do over the next 50 years will determine the fate of all life on the planet.
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.
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.