Wangari Maathai Quotes

Enjoy the top 107 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Wangari Maathai.

“I would like to call on young people to commit themselves to activities that contribute toward achieving their long-term dreams. They have the energy and creativity to shape a sustainable future. To the young people I say, you are a gift to your communities and indeed the world. You are our hope and our future.”
— Wangari Maathai —

I'm very conscious of the fact that you can't do it alone. It's teamwork. When you do it alone you run the risk that when you are no longer there nobody else will do it.

— Wangari Maathai

“Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from the land, but instill in them even more respect for it, because educated people are in a position to understand what is being lost. The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. As I told the foresters, and the women, you don't need a diploma to plant a tree.”

— Wangari Maathai

“As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. "Life is a journey and a struggle," she had said. "We cannot control it, but we can make the best of any situation." I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it.”

— Wangari Maathai

“Finally I was able to see that if I had a contribution I wanted to make, I must do it, despite what others said. That I was OK the way I was. That it was all right to be strong.”

— Wangari Maathai

“The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price. That is the problem.”

— Wangari Maathai

“It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”

— Wangari Maathai

“And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now.”

— Wangari Maathai

“In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.”

— Wangari Maathai

“That's the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree. And so I got an indigenous tree, called Nandi flame, it has this beautiful red flowers. When it is in flower it is like it is in flame.”

— Wangari Maathai

“Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking.”

— Wangari Maathai

“We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.”

— Wangari Maathai

“African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.”

— Wangari Maathai

“When you think of all the conflicts we have - whether those conflicts are local, whether they are regional or global - these conflicts are often over the management, the distribution of resources. If these resources are very valuable, if these resources are scarce, if these resources are degraded, there is going to be competition.”

— Wangari Maathai

“I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace.”

— Wangari Maathai

“It's a matter of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem.”

— Wangari Maathai

“For me, one of the major reasons to move beyond just the planting of trees was that I have tendency to look at the causes of a problem. We often preoccupy ourselves with the symptoms, whereas if we went to the root cause of the problems, we would be able to overcome the problems once and for all.”

— Wangari Maathai

“It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.”

— Wangari Maathai

“When resources are degraded, we start competing for them, whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.”

— Wangari Maathai

“There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting.”

— Wangari Maathai

“We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all.”

— Wangari Maathai

“It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.”

— Wangari Maathai

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.

— Wangari Maathai

“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.”

— Wangari Maathai

I stand before you and the world humbled by this recognition and uplifted by the honour of being the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. As the first African woman to receive this prize, I accept it on behalf of the people of Kenya and Africa, and indeed the world. I am especially mindful of women and the girl child. I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership.

— Wangari Maathai

“When I went back home, I was constantly being reminded, I'm an African woman, and so there are certain things I shouldn't do, certain ambitions that I should not entertain. That was a problem for me because I had never thought of myself as an African woman, never thought of myself as a woman to begin with. For me the limit was my capacity, my capability.”

— Wangari Maathai

“We all share one planet and are one hummanity, there is no escaping this reality.”

— Wangari Maathai

You have to know yourself, and that once you know yourself, then you cannot be bound by - because sometimes we are bound by other people's thoughts, because we are not sure about ourselves. But once you know yourself ... I guess it is really an expression of the biblical statements that the truth will make you free! When you know, then you are free, your mind is free.

— Wangari Maathai

“Those of us who have been privileged to receive education, skills, and experiences and even power must be role models for the next generation of leadership.”

— Wangari Maathai

“We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!”

— Wangari Maathai

“We refuse to share resources; we govern irresponsibly. If we are confident, if we have some of our cultural values, then we would be more committed to assisting our people out of poverty and creating an environment that can make it possible for our friends to assist us.”

— Wangari Maathai

What is really important is to educate people how to protect themselves and how to ensure that, despite their poverty, they can get tested and access drugs. So I just hope that those who can will make those drugs available.

— Wangari Maathai

“The little grassroots people can change this world.”

— Wangari Maathai

“I have always felt that perhaps women have sometimes almost embraced the same values as men, and the same character as men, because they are in the men's world, and they are trying to fit into a system that men have created. And maybe in truth when there is a critical mass of women who play that role in governments, then we will see whether women can really manage power in a way that is less destructive than the way that men have used power.”

— Wangari Maathai

“The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.”

— Wangari Maathai

“For us who are now in power, we need to be challenged to serve the people and ignore our own egos and personal interests so that we can really demonstrate to other African states that it is possible to share power without going to war.”

— Wangari Maathai

We do the right thing not to please people but because it's the only logically reasonable thing to do, as long as we are being honest with ourselves - even if we are the only ones.

— Wangari Maathai

“The people are learning that you cannot leave decisions only to leaders. Local groups have to create the political will for change, rather than waiting for others to do things for them. That is where positive, and sustainable, change begins.”

— Wangari Maathai

“The women of the Green Belt Movement have learned about the causes and the symptoms of environmental degradation. They have begun to appreciate that they, rather than their government, ought to be the custodians of the environment.”

— Wangari Maathai

Resources on the planet are limited, and limited resources can come to an end. But there are also a lot of resources that are renewable. A lot of land, for example, can be reclaimed from the encroaching deserts.

— Wangari Maathai

“We tend to put the environment last because we think the first thing we have to do is eliminate poverty. But you can't reduce poverty in a vacuum. You are doing it in an environment.”

— Wangari Maathai

“Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious.”

— Wangari Maathai

“What a friend we have in a tree, the tree is the symbol of hope, self improvement and what people can do for themselves.”

— Wangari Maathai

“The people are starving. They need food; they need medicine; they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station.”

— Wangari Maathai

“As long as there is no trust and confidence that there will be justice and fairness in resource distribution, political positioning will remain more important than service”

— Wangari Maathai

“All through the ages the African people have made efforts to deliver themselves from oppressive forces.”