Wangari Maathai Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking.

Wangari Maathai
When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.

Wangari Maathai
When the environment is destroyed, plundered or mismanaged, we undermine our quality of life and that of future generations.

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

Wangari Maathai
Trees are living symbols of peace and hope. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance.

Wangari Maathai
Let us embrace democratic governance, protect human rights and protect our environment. I am confident that we shall rise to the occasion. I have always believed that solutions to most of our problems must come from us.

Wangari Maathai
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
No matter who or where we are, or what our capabilities, we are called to do the best we can.

Wangari Maathai
As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. "Life is a journey and a struggle," she had said. "We cannot control it, but we can make the best of any situation." I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it.

Wangari Maathai
My time in America as a student was incredibly liberating. It was also troubling. It made me think about what the nuns in Kenya had told us. My previous education had been Victorian. I had been practically living the life of a nun, even though I hadn't taken holy orders.

Wangari Maathai
Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from the land, but instill in them even more respect for it, because educated people are in a position to understand what is being lost. The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. As I told the foresters, and the women, you don't need a diploma to plant a tree.

Wangari Maathai
Those of us who witness the degraded state of the environment and the suffering that comes with it cannot afford to be complacent. We continue to be restless. If we really carry the burden, we are driven to action. We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!

Wangari Maathai
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
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
Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.

Wangari Maathai
There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.

Wangari Maathai
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
The traditional ways were wrongly disowned by Christianity — in hindsight, medicine men were not demons but very important counsellors in the community.

Wangari Maathai
Anybody can dig a hole and plant a tree. But make sure it survives. You have to nurture it, you have to water it, you have to keep at it until it becomes rooted so it can take care or itself. There are so many enemies of trees.

Wangari Maathai
I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace.

Wangari Maathai
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.

Wangari Maathai
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.
All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. It must be this voice that is telling me to do something, and I am sure it's the same voice that is speaking to everybody on this planet — at least everybody who seems to be concerned about the fate of the world, the fate of this planet.

Wangari Maathai
I have seen rivers that were brown with silt become clean-flowing again.... The job is hardly over, but it no longer seems impossible.

Wangari Maathai
We lived in a land abundant with shrubs, creepers, ferns and trees.... Because rain fell regularly and reliably, clean drinking water was everywhere. There were large, well-watered fields of maize, beans, wheat and vegetables. Hunger was virtually unknown.

Wangari Maathai
I kept stumbling and falling and stumbling and falling as I searched for the good. 'Why?' I asked myself. Now I believe that I was on the right path all along, particularly with the Green Belt Movement, but then others told me that I shouldn't have a career, that I shouldn't raise my voice, that women are supposed to have a master. That I needed to be someone else. Finally I was able to see that if I had a contribution I wanted to make, I must do it, despite what others said. That I was OK the way I was. That it was all right to be strong.

Wangari Maathai