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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

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Wangari Maathai
Age: 71 †
Born: 1940
Born: April 1
Died: 2011
Died: September 25
Biologist
Environmentalist
Political Activist
Politician
Teacher
Veterinarian
Wangari Maathaï
Maathai
Wangari Maathai
Good
Woman
Educated
Vilify
Things
Easy
Innocent
Persecute
Men
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Following
Elitist
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Tradition
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Women
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Highly
Without
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African
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More quotes by Wangari Maathai

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Using trees as a symbol of peace is in keeping with a widespread African tradition. For example, the elders of the Kikuyu carried a staff from the thigi tree that, when placed between two disputing sides, caused them to stop fighting and seek reconciliation. Many communities in Africa have these traditions.
Wangari Maathai
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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
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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
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I know there is pain when sawmills close and people lose jobs, but we have to make a choice. We need water and we need these forests.
Wangari Maathai
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It is wonderful when you don't have the fear, and a lot of the time I don't ... I focus on what needs to be done instead.
Wangari Maathai
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It goes to local authorities and even to members of Parliament so that individual citizens almost become people who want to sit and wait for their member of Parliament to come and solve the problem. Now that won't take you anywhere. And if you follow it, you will see that it feeds corruption in the country.
Wangari Maathai
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We can love ourselves by loving the earth.
Wangari Maathai
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You cannot enslave a mind that knows itself. That values itself. That understands itself.
Wangari Maathai
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That's the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree.
Wangari Maathai
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The issue of carbon is one area where we really need to work together and if people don't have the technology they need, that technology needs to be made available and affordable.
Wangari Maathai
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There are certain areas where foreign investors can help the local people to generate wealth, and improve their quality of life. Some companies, for example, Del Monte, which produces pineapples in Kenya, pay a huge amount of taxes, I am sure, to the Kenyan government, and they do create jobs for thousands of locals.
Wangari Maathai
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It would be good for us Africans to accept ourselves as we are and recapture some of the positive aspects of our culture.
Wangari Maathai
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Once people see that you improve you life if you are educated, then education becomes a valuable tool and people want it.
Wangari Maathai
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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
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It gradually became clear that the Green Belt Movement's work with communities to repair the degraded environment could not be done effectively without participants embracing a set of core spiritual values.
Wangari Maathai
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So GMOs, who knows? Maybe GMOs will come, they will get maize that produces double. But who knows what else may happen to the maize?
Wangari Maathai
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It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.
Wangari Maathai
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I definitely hope to relax when I get back hope. I will disappear into the forest and be rejuvenated by the beauty of the mountains.
Wangari Maathai
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Quite often when you help poor people, they don't think about the environment. They think about survival.
Wangari Maathai
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First of all, farmers should work with universities and research institutions in the country, and hopefully with the government.
Wangari Maathai