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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.

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
Life
People
Tool
Improve
Educated
Valuable
Tools
Becomes
Education

More quotes by Wangari Maathai

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It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.
Wangari Maathai
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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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When I first started, it was really an innocent response to the needs of women in rural areas. When we started planting trees to meet their needs, there was nothing beyond that. I did not see all the issues that I have to come to deal with.
Wangari Maathai
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We refuse to share resources we govern irresponsibly. If we are confident, if we have some of our cultural values, then we would be more committed to assisting our people out of poverty and creating an environment that can make it possible for our friends to assist us.
Wangari Maathai
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The little grassroots people can change this world.
Wangari Maathai
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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
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The people are starving. They need food they need medicine they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station.
Wangari Maathai
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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.
Wangari Maathai
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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.
Wangari Maathai
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There are certain areas where foreign investors can help the local people to generate wealth, and improve their quality of life. Some companies, for example, Del Monte, which produces pineapples in Kenya, pay a huge amount of taxes, I am sure, to the Kenyan government, and they do create jobs for thousands of locals.
Wangari Maathai
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Every one of us can make a contribution. And quite often we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what's happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do.
Wangari Maathai
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Education of course 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, and with money you could buy things that you cannot buy if you don't have money.
Wangari Maathai
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We tend to put the environment last because we think the first thing we have to do is eliminate poverty and send children to school and provide health.
Wangari Maathai
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In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.
Wangari Maathai
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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
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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.
Wangari Maathai
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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
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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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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
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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.
Wangari Maathai