Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.
Wangari MaathaiRead
You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Empowering people is essential for environmental protection.
Wangari Maathai emphasizes that the protection of the environment is intrinsically linked to empowering individuals. By informing and educating communities about their resources and responsibilities, they become motivated to take ownership and actively participate in safeguarding their natural surroundings.
Themes
EnvironmentEmpowermentEducationResponsibilityResources
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at an environmental conference might use this quote to stress the need for community involvement.
More from Wangari Maathai
All quotes →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.
Wangari MaathaiRead
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 MaathaiRead
We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. [But] we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can.
Wangari MaathaiRead
As long as there is no trust and confidence that there will be justice and fairness in resource distribution, political positioning will remain more important than service
Wangari MaathaiRead
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 MaathaiRead
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