David Attenborough

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

It's extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, 'tell us about us', 'tell us about the first human being'. We are so self-obsessed with our own history. There is so much more out there than what connects to us. ”

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. ”

Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English. ”

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. ”

You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them. ”

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

We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense; we've got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven't done is developed our technology. ”

You can cry about death and very properly so, your own as well as anybody else's. But it's inevitable, so you'd better grapple with it and cope and be aware that not only is it inevitable, but it has always been inevitable, if you see what I mean. ”

I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work. ”