Wangari Maathai

“No matter how dark the cloud, there is always a thin, silver lining, and that is what we must look for. The silver lining will come, if not to us then to next generation or the generation after that. And maybe with that generation the lining will no longer be thin.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now.”

“We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.”

“Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out.”

“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.”