Top 80 Wangari Maathai Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Wangari Maathai

52. “The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.”

— Wangari Maathai

53. “Because I was a woman, I was vulnerable. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a ‘good African woman.’”

— Wangari Maathai

54. “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.”

— Wangari Maathai

55. “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.”

— Wangari Maathai

56. “As long as we have all these conflicts, it is the women who will continue to suffer, so that is one reason why I guess as women we should really work for peace, because we know how painful wars can be to us and our daughters.”

— Wangari Maathai

57. “When people can’t use you, they ridicule what you represent. I was lucky that I understood that, because when one does not understand that, it is very easy to be broken and to be subdued.”

— Wangari Maathai

58. “It gradually became clear that the Green Belt Movement’s work with communities to repair the degraded environment could not be done effectively without participants embracing a set of core spiritual values.”

— Wangari Maathai

59. “I definitely hope to relax when I get back hope. I will disappear into the forest and be rejuvenated by the beauty of the mountains.”

— Wangari Maathai

60. “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.”

— Wangari Maathai

61. “Passion begins with a burden and a split-second moment, when you understand something like never before. That burden is on those who know. Those who don’t know are at peace. Those of us who do know get disturbed and are forced to take action.”

— Wangari Maathai

62. “Sometimes I feel frustration at the bureaucracy for not moving fast enough to deliver in the way that I would prefer. But that is probably because I have worked for many years in the civil society, which tends to move much faster than government.”

— Wangari Maathai

63. “Unfortunately, the issues of climate change, unlike many other issues, are very subtle because the changes we observe are very, very subtle.”

— Wangari Maathai

64. “The people are starving. They need food; they need medicine; they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station.”

— Wangari Maathai

65. “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

66. “Resources on the planet are limited, and limited resources can come to an end. But there are also a lot of resources that are renewable. A lot of land, for example, can be reclaimed from the encroaching deserts.”

— Wangari Maathai

67. “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.”

— Wangari Maathai

68. “I knew that I was not doing anything wrong, and I knew in my mind I was doing the right thing. I knew that the people who were going against me were not going against me for a good purpose. I knew that they were trying to justify their corruption and misgovernance.”

— Wangari Maathai

69. “Do not be naive. AIDS is not a curse from God to Africans or the black people. It is a tool to control them designed by some evil-minded scientists, but we may not know who particularly did it.”

— Wangari Maathai

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

— Wangari Maathai

71. “Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious.”

— Wangari Maathai

72. “I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace.”

— Wangari Maathai

73. “There will always be people who think that you have ambitions.”

— Wangari Maathai

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

— Wangari Maathai

75. “Hallowed landscapes lost their sacredness and were exploited as the local people became insensitive to the destruction, accepting it as a sign of progress.”

— Wangari Maathai

76. “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

77. “Trees are living symbols of peace and hope. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded...”

— Wangari Maathai

78. “As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. “Life is a journey and a struggle,” she had said. “We cannot control it, but we can make the best of any situation.” I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it.”

— Wangari Maathai

79. “It was easy for me to be ridiculed and for both men and women to perceive that maybe I’m a bit crazy because I’m educated in the West and I have lost some of my basic decency as an African woman.”

— Wangari Maathai

80. “We refuse to share resources; we govern irresponsibly. If we are confident, if we have some of our cultural values, then we would be more committed to assisting our people out of poverty and creating an environment that can make it possible for our friends to assist us.”

— Wangari Maathai

81. “All through the ages the African people have made efforts to deliver themselves from oppressive forces.”

— Wangari Maathai

82. “When I first started, it was really an innocent response to the needs of women in rural areas. When we started planting trees to meet their needs, there was nothing beyond that. I did not see all the issues that I have to come to deal with.”

— Wangari Maathai

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

— Wangari Maathai

84. “For us who are now in power, we need to be challenged to serve the people and ignore our own egos and personal interests so that we can really demonstrate to other African states that it is possible to share power without going to war.”

— Wangari Maathai

85. “What is really important is to educate people how to protect themselves and how to ensure that, despite their poverty, they can get tested and access drugs. So I just hope that those who can will make those drugs available.”

— Wangari Maathai

86. “I think that for anybody who has worked in the civil society, government bureaucracy moves very very slowly.”

— Wangari Maathai

87. “What people see as fearlessness is really persistence.”

— Wangari Maathai