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
It's a matter of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the urgent need to address environmental issues, particularly the threat to Kenyan forests caused by human activities.
Wangari Maathai highlights the critical importance of Kenyan forests not only for the environment but also for the survival and well-being of the nation. The quote underscores that the threat of extinction facing these forests is a direct result of human actions, portraying environmental conservation as a vital and immediate concern for the future of the country.
In practice
During a speech on environmental awareness, I referenced Wangari Maathai's quote to emphasize the dire consequences of deforestation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.
The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Tree limbs rise and fall like the ecstatic arms of those who have submitted to the mystical life. Leaf sounds talk together like poets making fresh metaphors.
Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and marvellous and mysterious is turning out to be our own planet earth. There is nothing to match it anywhere, not yet anyway.
Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty.
We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.
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