Wangari Maathai Quotes

The future of the world belongs to the youth of the world, and it is from the youth and not from the old that the fire of life will warm and enlighten the world. It is your privilege to breathe the breath of life into the dry bones of many around you.

Kids are meeting in coffee shops and basements figuring out what's unsustainable in their communities. That's the future.

Our young people - their capacities to think, understand, investigate, and innovate - are America's future.

To be young and aware is to know you’re being lied to; to know that a bright green future is possible; to know that we can reimagine the world, rebuild our cities, redesign our lives, retool our factories, distribute innovation and creativity and all live in a world that is not only better than the alternative, but much better than the world we have now.

Ontario’s colleges and universities offer our young people life-changing opportunities. With an education, you can go anywhere and do anything. I am so impressed with the way our postsecondary students are engaging in their communities, and I am inspired by their hope and optimism. They are not the leaders of tomorrow – they are leaders today.

I believe the only hope for mankind lies in the hands of our young people.

We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.

I've met dedicated people from all sectors of society who are committed to giving children the tools they need for a better future. I'm always impressed by the passionate young leaders I meet. As the pace of change accelerates, so do the challenges we face. However, the chances to solve them increase too.

I am ever hopeful that there are generations of young Chinese people who are really thinking about the future and what kind of society they want.

More than ever, it's very apparent that we are strapped for natural resources. We configure and reconfigure to try and find a way to maintain natural assets, when, ultimately, we are overlooking the most abundant, dynamic, and powerful resource we have available to us - our youth.

It's very important that we expand our use of clean energy and make a long-term commitment to it.

I am often asked what can people do to become a good global citizen? I reply that it begins in your own community.

I care about our young people, and I wish them great success, because they are our Hope for the Future, and some day, when my generation retires, they will have to pay us trillions of dollars in social security

The Earth Charter is important as an expression of the commitment of people throughout the Earth to evoke their own deepest moral, spiritual and ethical principles in the task of ensuring a sustainable future for those who inhabit the Earth now and those who will follow us on the Earth.

How can you save the world you have not seen if you can't save the community you have seen?

Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.

It is important how we view the youth of our nation. To simply consider them as new age voters will be a big mistake. They are the new age power.

The Peace Corps represents some, if not all, of the best virtues in this society. It stands for everything that America has ever stood for. It stands for everything we believe in and hope to achieve in the world.

Nothing matters more to the future of this Nation than insuring that our young men and women learn to believe in themselves and believe in their dreams, and that they develop this capacitythat you develop this capacity, so that you keep it all of your lives. I believe one of Americas most priceless assets is the idealism which motivates the young people of America. My generation has invested all that it has, not only its love but its hope and faith, in yours.

Today’s generation of young people holds more power than any generation before it to make a positive impact on the world.

A more just world is possible. In most of the global issues, and also in so many of the development issues I'm involved in in our region, the young people that I am working with are seizing the tools at their disposal and trying to use them well, for issues far larger than their immediate personal benefit and concerns. That's what gives me hope.

Politicians, they give the visible aspect of the change, but the change, the root, the anchor are in young people.

As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come.

What I can do is to go out and talk about the problems and solutions, make people aware of the scope of the problems, get them to become advocates for a turnaround, and convince them to develop an action plan, targeted to their community, to deal with young people. [They need to] find out what the kids want to do - dances, midnight-basketball leagues.