Wangari Maathai Quotes

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Wangari Maathai

Profession : Activist

Birth : April 1, 1940

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

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

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.

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 able to overcome the problems once and for all.

Wangari Maathai

You can educate people on how to preempt their own conflict.

Wangari Maathai

That's the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree. And so I got an indigenous tree, called Nandi flame, it has this beautiful red flowers. When it is in flower it is like it is in flame.

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