Quote

Once people see that you improve you life if you are educated, then education becomes a valuable tool and people want it.

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
Tool
Improve
Educated
Valuable
Tools
Becomes
Education
Life

More quotes by 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
The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.
Wangari Maathai
Image
I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.
Wangari Maathai
Image
It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.
Wangari Maathai
Image
What people see as fearlessness is really persistence. Because I am focused on the solution, I don't see the danger.
Wangari Maathai
Image
As long as we have all these conflicts, it is the women who will continue to suffer, so that is one reason why I guess as women we should really work for peace, because we know how painful wars can be to us and our daughters.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.
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
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.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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.
Wangari Maathai
Image
It's a matter of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem.
Wangari Maathai
Image
The American government has spent a lot of money trying to reclaim, for example, the Everglades, and to allow the natural vegetation at the coastal areas to be restored because that was part of the vegetation that actually protected the hinterlands.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
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
You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.
Wangari Maathai
Image
We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.
Wangari Maathai
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People are dynamic. They change, and soon as there are enough of you, things change [for a whole society].
Wangari Maathai