David Attenborough

I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.

I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.

I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.

There's a small worm called Loa Loa Filariasis. This parasite can survive in one environment exclusively- namely, underneath the skin and inside the eyes of human beings. Children and the elderly in tropical regions (usually the poorest) are the most widely affected. A painful, slow death is virtually certain. The worm can actually live in the host for 17 years before the host finally dies.

The fundamental issue is the moral issue.

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.

I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature.

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

I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.

The reverse side of the coin in having this extraordinary ability to go anywhere, is that no one anywhere is remote any more.

We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.

Opponents say natural selection is not a theory supported by observation or experiment; that it is not based on fact; and that it cannot be proved. Well, no, you cannot prove the theory to people who won't believe in it any more than you can prove that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. However, we know the battle happened then, just as we know the course of evolution on earth unambiguously shows that Darwin was right.

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.

People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.

Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are.

I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival.

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

I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.

It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.

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.

You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you're talking about.