Wangari Maathai Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“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.”

“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 women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.”

“It would be good for us Africans to accept ourselves as we are and recapture some of the positive aspects of our culture.”

“When you think of all the conflicts we have - whether those conflicts are local, whether they are regional or global - these conflicts are often over the management, the distribution of resources. If these resources are very valuable, if these resources are scarce, if these resources are degraded, there is going to be competition.”

“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.”

“We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.”

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

“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.”

“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.”