155 Quotes by 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 Africa has to gain wealth

I would be on my knees looking at them and admiring them, trying to have them on my neck, until my mother would call and wonder what ... I was doing in the river.

If they had resources, they would not be killing each other over grazing ground and water.

We are sharing our resources in a very inequitable way. 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.

When you have the environment degraded, it is always so that we are going to fight over the few resources that are left.

You must not deal only with the symptoms. You have to get to the root causes by promoting environmental rehabilitation and empowering people to do things for themselves. What is done for the people without involving them cannot be sustained.

It's a matter of life and death for this country, ... The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem.

If you want the future generations to live in peace, we must invest in the protection of the environment and we must train especially our young people so that they don't think, for example, the whole world is like Japan.

It's very important to remain optimistic and to see the silver lining in everything you do. Because no matter how sometimes things look difficult, and look like there is no hope, there is always a small glimmering of silver lining that is in everything, and I always look for that, and hang on that, and before I know it, another day comes and is gone.