Quote

What people see as fearlessness is really persistence. Because I am focused on the solution, I don't see the danger.

Wangari Maathai

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
People
Fearlessness
Persistence
Solution
Focused
Solutions
Danger
Really

More quotes by Wangari Maathai

Image
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
Image
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
Image
We think that diamonds are very important, gold is very important, all these minerals are very important. We call them precious minerals, but they are all forms of the soil. But that part of this mineral that is on top, like it is the skin of the earth, that is the most precious of the commons.
Wangari Maathai
Image
You cannot enslave a mind that knows itself. That values itself. That understands itself.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
The living conditions of the poor must be improved if we really want to save our environment
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
We can love ourselves by loving the earth.
Wangari Maathai
Image
I think that for anybody who has worked in the civil society, government bureaucracy moves very very slowly.
Wangari Maathai
Image
Women are responsible for their children, they cannot sit back, waste time and see them starve.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
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.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
I think [GMO] is one area where the is a need for legal regulations to make sure that companies - because at the moment, companies are the ones that have this technology - will not use this technology in a way that could adversely affect the people.
Wangari Maathai
Image
I'm sure that many people who are involved in an environmental effort ... they will be pretty much encouraged by this recognition.
Wangari Maathai
Image
I don't believe [Africa] is ready to shift - and she needs to shift. So she needs to get the technology and she can only get that technology from the developed world.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
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