The more you go on, the less you need people standing between you and the animal and the camera waving their arms about.
Interpretation
As you become more skilled, you rely less on others to capture the essence of nature.
David Attenborough's quote suggests that with experience and confidence, a person can navigate and connect with the natural world more directly, without the interference of others. It implies that one's understanding and appreciation of nature deepens as one becomes more self-sufficient in observing and documenting it.
In practice
In a documentary about wildlife photography, this quote can inspire aspiring photographers to trust their instincts.
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.
For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.
Natural phenomena undisturbed by man point the way to the realization of a new technique. One needs a keen sense of observation. We must understand Nature before we can adapt its way of working to our needs.
It may be doubted that there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures.
Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species.
Nature does nothing without a purpose. In children may be observed the traces and seeds of what will one day be settled psychological habits, though psychologically a child hardly differs for the time being from an animal.
If we can't afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we're in an insurmountable mess.
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