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
eight environmental extinction
One in eight plant species face extinction.
museums library world
London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.
fables natural natural-history
Natural history is not about producing fables.
optimistic birth-rate giving
The climate, the economic situation, rising birth rates; none of these things give me a lot of hope or reason to be optimistic.
thinking talking people
You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you're talking about.
animal knowing trying
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.
light world evolution
Nothing in the natural world makes sense - except when seen in the light of evolution
animal trying interest
I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work.
coins sides ability
The reverse side of the coin in having this extraordinary ability to go anywhere, is that no one anywhere is remote any more.
thinking had-enough would-be
If I can make programmes when I'm 95, that would be fine. But I would think I'll have had enough by then.
thinking paris vienna
The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.
discovery missing trying
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.
liars believe motherhood
It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
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.