"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."

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Insight & Reflection

This reflection on travel by David Attenborough resonates across generations. It highlights a fundamental truth about human nature: our continuous search for meaning in travel is what ultimately defines our character and our path forward.

About David Attenborough

Sir David Frederick Attenborough is an English broadcaster, natural historian, and writer. His presenting career began as host of Zoo Quest in 1954, and has spanned seven decades; it includes the nine documentary series forming The Life Collection, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and Frozen Planet. He is the only person to have won BAFTA Awards in black-and-white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolution. Over his life, he has collected dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator and one Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Personality – Non-Daily.

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Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by David Attenborough

"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 inevitable, but it has always been inevitable, if you see what I mean."

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"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 them."

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"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 life that makes life worth living."

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"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 are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about."

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More about Travel

"Naturally, there are times when every woman likes to be flattered... to feel she is the most important thing in someone's world. Only a man can paint this picture."

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"The lover of life makes the whole world into his family, just as the lover of the fair sex creates his from all the lovely women he has found, from those that could be found, and those who are impossible to find."

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