It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it.

You were never quite sure which were pickpockets or loose ladies.

Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936, and it was a monopoly, and there was only one broadcaster and it operated on a license which is not the same as a government grant.

No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experiened

Natural history is not about producing fables.

I remember sleeping in places that were infested with rats and waking up with one trundling over my face. Actually, I hate rats! In my time, I’ve picked up all sorts of things in hotels-fleas,...

Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when you got there it was the back of beyond. It was just a series of small tin sheds.

The most extraordinary thing about trying to piece together the missing links in the evolutionary story is that when you do find a missing link and put it in the story, you suddenly need all...

The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why...

If I can make programmes when I’m 95, that would be fine. But I would think I’ll have had enough by then.

I mean, one is living an amazingly privileged life. It’s only been the last 20 or so years that one could have possibly gone to all the places you and I go to.

You know, we could say yes, they were about to exterminate sea horses and now they aren’t… But it isn’t a solution to the world’s problems.

People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can’t sustain...

You don’t meet many 5-year-olds who are not interested in a hedgehog or a stickleback.

It’s not just that we are dependent on the natural world for our food and for the very air we breathe-which is, of course, the case-and that the very richness of the natural world continues...

It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or...

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.

Neither have I said we have got to do this because of some pharmaceutical advantage there may or may not be. The moral issue is that we should not impoverish this world.

People knew that animals were nocturnal but they didn’t really know what they did because they couldn’t see it.

Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?

Nature isn’t positive in that way. It doesn’t aim itself at you. It’s not being unkind to you.

The climate, the economic situation, rising birth rates; none of these things give me a lot of hope or reason to be optimistic.

I’ve been to Nepal, but I’d like to go to Tibet. It must be a wonderful place to go. I don’t think there’s anything there, but it would be a nice place to visit.

I asked the airline staff what I was going to do with all the animals as I didn’t have any food for them. They were very unhelpful.

Very few species have survived unchanged. There’s one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it’s survived by...

Very few people in the history of biology could have seen as much of the actual things that I have, and the sad thing is that I do so little with it. I’m so busy...

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

There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.

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.

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in...

Here we are with even the most obvious things like a fishing policy or a transport policy-we know what the consequences are.

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.

The more you go on, the less you need people standing between you and the animal and the camera waving their arms about.

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...

If I do a series or tapes for the States and it’s sponsored by somebody for the public broadcast system, I am committed to going on tour around various stations.

I get Indian ring-necked parakeets in my garden every morning. There’s a big colony living wild down the road. There might be some out there now.

All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.

My last trip was to the States, and on the way back I sat in the cockpit for take-off and landing. In a funny way, I think aircrew know that I’ve travelled a lot and...

The nighttime is a very active time.

I don’t like rats, but there’s not much else I don’t like. The problem with rats is they have no fear of human beings, they’re loaded with foul diseases, they would run the place given...

Cameramen are among the most extraordinarily able and competent people I know. They have to have an insight into natural history that gives them a sixth sense of what the creature is going to do,...

An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.

We’ve lived here for 38 years. This is where our kids were born, and this is my place. As far as I’m concerned, if I can’t have this, I don’t want anything.

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...

I mean, it is an extraordinary thing that a large proportion of your country and my country, of the citizens, never see a wild creature from dawn ’til dusk, unless it’s a pigeon, which isn’t...

I’ve been bitten by a python. Not a very big one. I was being silly, saying: ‘Oh, it’s not poisonous…’ Then, wallop! But you have fear around animals.

Oh, my capacity for guilt is enormous. I’m all the time thinking I’m not doing the things I should be doing, not doing enough of it, or I said I’d be vice-president of something or...

There is a shift… whether there will be some 180 turn-I don’t think there can possibly be. But I think that we might move away from some of the appalling materialist considerations which have governed...

I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago – my job was secure. I didn’t have to promote myself. These days there’s far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation...

I am not over fond of animals.