I'm not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pat them, but I am intoxicated by animals.
Interpretation
The speaker differentiates between superficial affection for animals and a deeper, more profound admiration for them.
In this quote, David Attenborough expresses his view that true appreciation for animals goes beyond merely liking them or enjoying their physical presence. Instead, it conveys a more intense, almost intoxicating fascination with their behaviors and existence, highlighting the complexity and beauty of the natural world.
In practice
Using this quote at an animal rights rally to emphasize deeper connection with animals.
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.
When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.
I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.
The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.
We are using resources as if we had two planets, not one. There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B.'
From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow.
I go five steps in the garden, and I immediately lose track of time... it is a kind of joy in being alive in being in the world. I always found that in the garden. That is what it means to me.
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