People say we have all got to join Europe for reasons which even the economists themselves aren’t clear on-at the same time we’re saying, well yes of course Scotland has got to be independent. And...

Right, we’d better have a bloody revolution.

I think we’re lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.

If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you’re driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation.

We really need to kick the carbon habit and stop making our energy from burning things. Climate change is also really important. You can wreck one rainforest then move, drain one area of resources and...

Being in touch with the natural world is crucial.

I don’t know [why we’re here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And...

To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t believe that.

I think a major element of jetlag is psychological. Nobody ever tells me what time it is at home.

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

Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious.

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

I am an ardent recycler. I would like to think that it works. I don’t know whether it does or not.

It is curiosity, quite right-a divine curiosity. A characteristic of the gods is curiosity.

Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.

I’m luckier than my grandfather, who didn’t move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.

It’s extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, ‘tell us about us’, ‘tell us about the first human being’. We are so self-obsessed with our own history....

You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That’s what natural history programmes should be for.

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

I don’t think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish...

We are a plague on the Earth.

It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for – the whole thing – rather than just one or two stars.

I’m especially involved, for example, in the Richmond Environmental Centre. That’s one of those things you can hardly say no to.

If my grandchildren were to look at me and say, ‘You were aware species were disappearing and you did nothing, you said nothing’, that I think is culpable. I don’t know how much more they...

All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder – and ultimately impossible to solve – with ever more people.

I believe the Abominable Snowman may be real. I think there may be something in that.

It’s lost on me. I can just about tell if it’s got a jet engine or one of those funny things on the front!

If I can bicycle, I bicycle.

London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world… It’s got everything you want, really.

We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense; we’ve got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven’t done is developed our...

I do an awful lot of appearances, and to have one person always grinding the same axe would not be a good idea.

When I was right in the middle of Borneo, you thought you were in a different world. There was no radio, no ways of communicating.

‎Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever increasing population. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s...