A Quote by David Attenborough

How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing. — © David Attenborough
How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing.
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 expect me to be doing, I'd better ask them.
I began to wonder - I knew I was an artist or wanted to be one - but I was wondering whether I really was an artist. I was doing such ordinary things that I could feel the difference. Most people would look at those things and say, 'Well, that's nothing. What did you do that for? That's just a wreck of a car or a wreck of a man. That's nothing. That isn't art.' They don't say that anymore.
My husband and I, when we had our five children and they were grown, we thought we were entitled to grandchildren. And so we were just expecting this to happen; of course, nothing was happening. And then we kept begging, bribing, cajoling, anything - threatening to adopt our own grandchildren - and finally, we got some grandchildren.
There's just a law to the universe. We can have the San Andreas rip tonight. You've nothing to do with that. We could have had that super hurricane, that, look what it did to South Carolina two or three hundred miles offshore! Imagine if a category 5 eye wall went right up the Chesapeake Bay. They can say "well, mankind did that." No, mother nature decides. So, will we survive? I'm sure we will.
. . . you have no idea how many people there are in the world whose day could be made and their life changed for the better if someone would just look them in the eye, smile, and say, "Hello.
My dad was very, very invested in image. He felt that as a black person, the thing you could control was how did you look, how did you dress, how did you sound, how did you smell, how did you act. All of that stuff that you could control would absolutely have a strong impact on your access.
I'm constantly surprised by... an orange will roll off a table, and I'll catch it before I knew it was falling. Something happens there. We could write it off and say, 'Subconsciously I knew that was happening,' but there's so many things every day - I'm amazed by how little we know.
I've always thought of myself as a reporter. When people ask why I don't stop writing, I say, `Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about.’ With all that's going on, how could I stop?
At the end of my career, am I going to say I did well, but I didn't give it my all? I'd be very, very angry with myself if I didn't give 100 percent. If I gave my all and I got to whatever point in the world, I could look back and at least I say I did the best I could.
As kids we used to laugh/Who knew that life would move this fast? Who knew I'd have to look at you through a glass? And look, tell me you ain't did it, you ain't did it And if you did, then that's family business.
Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?
A terrible premonition washed over me. This was how the whole world would end.... They would devour the forest and excrete piles of buildings made of stone wrenched from the earth or from dead trees. They would hammer paths of bare stone between their dwellings, and dirty the rivers and subdue the land until it could recall only the will of man. They could not stop themselves from doing what they did. They did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not know how to stop. They no longer knew what was enough.
A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they'll ask one of two questions. Either they will ask: "what in God's name were they doing?" or they may look back and say: "how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?"
If a bell failed to ring, if a stove smoked, if a wheel on a machine stuck, you knew at once where to look and did so with alacrity; you found the defect and knew how to cure it. But the thing within you, the secret mainspring that alone gave meaning to life, the thing within us that alone is living, alone is capable of feeling pleasure and pain, of craving happiness and experiencing it- that was unknown. You knew nothing about that, nothing at all, and if the mainspring failed there was no cure. Wasn't it insane?
I left the clinic in a daze that had nothing to do with my head injury. Clear up in a week or so? How could Dr. Olendzki speak so lightly about this? I was going to look like a mutant for Christmas and most of the ski trip. I had a black eye. A freaking black eye. And my mother had given it to me.
I don't know how many more movies I'm going to get the opportunity to make and I don't want to look back and go: "Man, I just floated through that one." Or: "I did that one for the money." I want to be able to say that I worked as a hard as I could and I did the best work that I could do.
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