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When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.
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
Peace
Hope
Seeds
Trees
Plant
Climate
Tree
More quotes by Wangari Maathai
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
But when you have bad governance, of course, these resources are destroyed: The forests are deforested, there is illegal logging, there is soil erosion. I got pulled deeper and deeper and saw how these issues become linked to governance, to corruption, to dictatorship.
Wangari Maathai
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
We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind.
Wangari Maathai
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
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
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
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
Sometimes I feel frustration at the bureaucracy for not moving fast enough to deliver in the way that I would prefer. But that is probably because I have worked for many years in the civil society, which tends to move much faster than government.
Wangari Maathai
I knew that I was not doing anything wrong, and I knew in my mind I was doing the right thing. I knew that the people who were going against me were not going against me for a good purpose. I knew that they were trying to justify their corruption and misgovernance.
Wangari Maathai
We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. [But] we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can.
Wangari Maathai
The developed world should be willing to help [Africa] and support her and make this energy affordable.
Wangari Maathai
All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet.
Wangari Maathai
Sometimes we become bound by other people's thoughts because we are not sure about ourselves.
Wangari Maathai
Yet now the industrialized world is moving away from fossil fuels and moving towards renewable sources of energy. And because we have not invested so much into education, we don't have the technology and sometimes we don't even have the capital to buy this technology.
Wangari Maathai
Unfortunately, the issues of climate change, unlike many other issues, are very subtle because the changes we observe are very, very subtle.
Wangari Maathai
Do not be naive. AIDS is not a curse from God to Africans or the black people. It is a tool to control them designed by some evil-minded scientists, but we may not know who particularly did it.
Wangari Maathai
One of the reasons why I've written The Challenge for Africa is to save it. Surely there are so many problems we can solve in Africa, but first and foremost, we need a government that feels responsible to protect their own people from the exploitations, from the misuse, from the mistreatment that they can easily get.
Wangari Maathai
Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys from time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.
Wangari Maathai
Education is a very empowering experience, so many people who went to school also managed to improve their quality of life much faster because they could get a job, they could get money. Once people see that you improve your life if you are educated, then education becomes a valuable tool and people want it.
Wangari Maathai
