Quotes by Wangari Maathai

About Wangari Maathai:

Wangari Muta Maathai was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica (Benedictine College) and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

You cannot blame the mismanagement of the economy or the fact that we have not invested adequately in education in order to give our people the knowledge, the skills and the technology that they need in order to be able to use the resources that Afri...

Wangari Maathai

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

In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families.

Wangari Maathai

Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys from time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.

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.

Wangari Maathai

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

It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African wome...

Wangari Maathai

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

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

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

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 p...

Wangari Maathai

Women are responsible for their children, they cannot sit back, waste time and see them starve.

Wangari Maathai

I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.

Wangari Maathai

We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.

Wangari Maathai

It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.

Wangari Maathai

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

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.

Wangari Maathai

For me, one of the major reasons to move beyond just the planting of trees was that I have tendency to look at the causes of a problem. We often preoccupy ourselves with the symptoms, whereas if we went to the root cause of the problems, we would be ...

Wangari Maathai

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 corruptio...

Wangari Maathai

Author Bio

  • NameWangari Maathai
  • DescriptionKenyan environmental and political activist
  • BornApril 1, 1940
  • DiedSeptember 25, 2011
  • CountryKenya
  • ProfessionBiologist; Scientist
  • AwardsNobel Peace Prize; Knight Of The Legion Of Honour; Jawaharlal Nehru Award For International Understanding; Right Livelihood Award; Petra-Kelly-Preis; Sophie Prize; Goldman Environmental Prize; Indira Gandhi Prize; The Nichols-Chancellor's Medal