“Birds were flying from continent to continent long before we were. They reached the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica, long before we did. They can survive in the hottest of deserts. Some can remain on the wing for years at a time. They can girdle the globe. Now, we have taken over the earth and the sea and the sky, but with skill and care and knowledge, we can ensure that there is still a place on Earth for birds in all their beauty and variety – if we want to … and surely, we should.”
Closing lines
The Life of Birds (1998)
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David Attenborough 70
British broadcaster and naturalist 1926Related quotes
Source: Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics (1982), Ch. 6 : Building Community : Processes for Groups, p. 92
Context: We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep
Context: We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze. Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility. In actual practice, however, distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little. A state of affairs (as with most face-offs between interpretations) not unlike calling the same food by two different names. So much for metaphors.
Source: Why I still have hope for coral reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_why_i_still_have_hope_for_coral_reefs (April 2017)

Opening remarks at the First Congress of the Association of Space Explorers, held in Cernay, France. (2 October 1985) I Congress, Association of Space Explorers, 2012-06-21, en http://www.space-explorers.org/congress/congress1.html,

在天願作比翼鳥
在地願為連理枝
天長地久有時盡
此恨綿綿無絶期
The last four lines.
"A Song of Unending Sorrow"

"A View from the Patriotic Left" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F01E41CB-A584-4597-B9BE-86BBD9B3F7A1, Boston Globe (2002-09-09)]: On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2002

The Use of Life (1894), ch. IV: Recreation
These opinions, I know, are quite sufficient to have me looked down upon as a mind of the fourth order.
Ecuador (1929)