Wangari Maathai 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 corruption, to dictatorship.

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.