"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."

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More quotes from: David Attenborough

• "All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly ..."
• "An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not ..."
• "Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel. "
• "Being in touch with the natural world is crucial. "
• "Changing the way we measure things is vital. So is decompartmentalising society-making sure that economics ..."
• "Children start off reading in books about lions and giraffes and so on, but they ..."
• "Crying wolf is a real danger. "
• "Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when ..."
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• "I asked the airline staff what I was going to do with all the animals ..."
• "I do an awful lot of appearances, and to have one person always grinding the ..."
• "I don't approve of sunbathing, and it's bad for you. "
• "I don't run a car, have never run a car. I could say that this ..."
• "I get Indian ring-necked parakeets in my garden every morning. There's a big colony living ..."
• "I have never said that the reason we have got to preserve the tiger or ..."
• "I haven't-touch wood-had a stomach upset for 15 or 20 years. "
• "I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still ..."
• "I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. ..."
• "I mean, it is an extraordinary thing that a large proportion of your country and ..."
• "I mean, one is living an amazingly privileged life. It's only been the last 20 ..."
• "I once had aspirations to be an anthropologist, and I know from anthropology that people ..."
• "I remember sleeping in places that were infested with rats and waking up with one ..."
• "I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go ..."
• "I think a major element of jetlag is psychological. Nobody ever tells me what time ..."
• "I think that anybody with any sense of perspective-geological or evolutionary-will recognise that the one ..."
• "I think that the justification for what I do is that in the end you ..."
• "I think there will be radical changes. But I don't actually think that within the ..."
• "I'm a very old BBC hand. "

• "I'm absolutely strict about it. When I land, I put my watch right, and I ..."
• "I'm afraid I'm not a practising Christian, but it seems to me to be absolutely ..."
• "I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage. "
• "I'm by and large against centralisation. "
• "I'm coming towards the end of the shelf. "
• "I'm especially involved, for example, in the Richmond Environmental Centre. That's one of those things ..."
• "I'm not in politics. "
• "I've been to Nepal, but I'd like to go to Tibet. It must be a ..."
• "If I can bicycle, I bicycle. "
• "If I do a series or tapes for the States and it's sponsored by somebody ..."
• "If you don't pay attention to it... one doesn't want to be too high-flown about ..."
• "In the old days... it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn't have opinions. ..."
• "It is curiosity, quite right-a divine curiosity. A characteristic of the gods is curiosity. "
• "It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing ..."
• "It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the ..."
• "It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a ..."
• "It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species. "
• "It's about cherishing the woodland at the bottom of your garden or the stream that ..."
• "It's lost on me. I can just about tell if it's got a jet engine ..."
• "It's not just that we are dependent on the natural world for our food and ..."
• "It's very easy to say everything is outrageous. But if you have an oil company ..."
• "Just recently we were coming out of Niger and it so happened that there was ..."
• "Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there ..."
• "My last trip was to the States, and on the way back I sat in ..."
• "Neither have I said we have got to do this because of some pharmaceutical advantage ..."
• "Oh, my capacity for guilt is enormous. I'm all the time thinking I'm not doing ..."
• "People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are ..."
• "People knew that animals were nocturnal but they didn't really know what they did because ..."

• "People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful ..."
• "People say we have all got to join Europe for reasons which even the economists ..."
• "Right, we'd better have a bloody revolution. "
• "Since when has Finland been a rotten place to live in? "
• "Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936, and it was a monopoly, and ..."
• "The fundamental issue is the moral issue. "
• "The nighttime is a very active time. "
• "The only way Prescott is going to get through something to do with transport policy, ..."
• "The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it ..."
• "The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able ..."
• "The reverse side of the coin in having this extraordinary ability to go anywhere, is ..."
• "The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life ..."
• "There are a multitude of things that the individual can do. There is the present ..."
• "There are perfectly good independent small nations. "
• "There are things to be done at all levels: from using less power and being ..."
• "There is a shift... whether there will be some 180 turn-I don't think there can ..."
• "Things change... I don't think we should regard change as a disaster. "
• "Very few people in the history of biology could have seen as much of the ..."
• "We have said some terrible things! When I say we, I mean I identify myself ..."
• "We were sent in an old two-engined Dakota, which held 20 or so people. It ..."
• "We've lived here for 38 years. This is where our kids were born, and this ..."
• "Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English. "
• "When I was right in the middle of Borneo, you thought you were in a ..."
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• "You don't meet many 5-year-olds who are not interested in a hedgehog or a stickleback. "
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• "You were never quite sure which were pickpockets or loose ladies. "