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

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
Danger
Really
People
Fearlessness
Persistence
Solution
Focused
Solutions

More quotes by Wangari Maathai

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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 think that for anybody who has worked in the civil society, government bureaucracy moves very very slowly.
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Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect.
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Culture defines who we are and how we see ourselves. A new attitude toward nature provides space for a new attitude toward culture and the role it plays in sustainable development
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Tradition sometimes excludes the girl child from inheriting or single women may not want to be perceived as pursuing too much property. The law has come a long way in favor of the woman, but it is the tradition, the attitudes, that we often have to fight.
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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.
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You cannot enslave a mind that knows itself. That values itself. That understands itself.
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We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.
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You can't reduce poverty in a vacuum. You are doing it in an environment.
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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.
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We see that the environment is something to exploit, because we see the environment in terms of minerals for example, or forests, or even raw materials that we produce on our land, or even land itself. We see it in terms of what we can exploit rather than the medium in which all of these activities have to take place.
Wangari Maathai
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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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Nobody in the world is completely dependent on another person, but we are all interdependent.
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Why do we have to have people come from afar to come and grow food for us, or to grow food to sell to us? It is partly because we are almost becoming used to people doing things for us. Like somebody else is going to solve that problem for us. And that to me is very disempowering system.
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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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We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.
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Obviously the world is moving away from high carbon energy to low carbon energy, and eventually moving away toward renewable energy. So it is in the interest of Africa to move towards that, because that's where the world is moving.
Wangari Maathai