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
We have a responsibility to protect the rights of generations, of all species, that cannot speak for themselves today. The global challenge of climate change requires that we ask no less of our leaders, or ourselves.
Interpretation
We must advocate for the rights of future generations and all species affected by climate change.
Wangari Maathai emphasizes our moral obligation to safeguard the environment and advocate for those who cannot defend themselves, including future generations and various species. She asserts that the issue of climate change is a pressing global challenge that necessitates accountability and proactive leadership from both our leaders and ourselves.
In practice
In a speech at an environmental conference, to highlight the importance of sustainable practices.
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.
No prosaic description can portray the grandeur of 40 miles of rugged mountains rising beyond a placid lake in which each shadowy precipice and each purple gorge is reflected with a vividness that rivals the original.
We who are gathered here may represent a particular delete, not of money and power, but of concern for the earth for the earth's sake.
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
In Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, mostly I love the soft collision here of harbor and shore, the subtly haunting briny quality that all small towns have when they are situated on the sea
I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.
There is a Precious Mountain _x000D_ Even the Seven Treasures cannot compare _x000D_ A cold moon rises through the pines _x000D_ Layer upon layer of bright clouds _x000D_ How many towering peaks? _x000D_ How many wandering miles? _x000D_ The valley streams run clear _x000D_ Happiness forever!
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