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It was easy for me to be ridiculed and for both men and women to perceive that maybe I'm a bit crazy because I'm educated in the West and I have lost some of my basic decency as an African woman.

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
Crazy
Bits
Ridiculed
Maybe
Decency
Woman
African
Easy
Perceive
Lost
Educated
Women
Basic
Men
West

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I'm sure that many people who are involved in an environmental effort ... they will be pretty much encouraged by this recognition.
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I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.
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What a friend we have in a tree, the tree is the symbol of hope, self improvement and what people can do for themselves.
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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.
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We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!
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Disempowerment - whether defined in terms of a lack of self-confidence , apathy, fear, or an inability to take charge of one's own life - is perhaps the most unrecognised problem in Africa today.
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What I am trying to say is that they need to learn to rely on themselves and to learn from other people, and when you learn something from other people, then you keep moving onward for yourself.
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We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.
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Culture is coded wisdom
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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.
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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.
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I was particularly talking with respect to aid, because that to me is one area that can make people so dependent, and unfortunately, that dependency starts with the government.
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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.
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If you make mistakes that is alright because we all make mistakes and we learn from those mistakes. You gain confidence from learning, failing and rising again.
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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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Now when Nile perch was introduced [into Lake Victoria], I don't think enough research was done maybe it was done, maybe it was not. But Nile perch is a huge fish. So it ate all the little fish, and it grew into a monster which the local people could not fish with their little boats and their little nets.
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When you know who you are you are free.
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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.
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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.
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People are dynamic. They change, and soon as there are enough of you, things change [for a whole society].
Wangari Maathai