Wangari Maathai Quotes

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are.

We all recognize that in recent decades, many important achievements have helped create a cleaner, healthier environment, yet our national needs in environmental health are not being fully met.

In the long term the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it is unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is a rule of nature.

There are real and growing dangers to our simple and most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we bring, and the land which sustains us.... If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now.

The environment is more than just nature. The environment is peoples needs.

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it..

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

There are fewer chemical pollutants in the air. Our drinking water is safer. Our food standards have been raised. We've cleaned up more toxic waste sites in three years than the previous administrations did in twelve. The environment is cleaner, and we have fought off the most vigorous assault on environmental protection since we began to protect the environment in 1970. We are moving in the right direction to the 21st century.

How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? …. How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problems, and the conservation of our natural resources.

The current challenge facing the environmental authorities is how to properly deal with the environmental problems caused by economic development.

Conservation’s grand challenge is to save nature in a world that will soon have 9 billion hungry, thirsty, energy-using people.

We only have one earth. Let's take care of it.

I never lose an opportunity to speak about my obsession: humankind and the environment.

To deal with these problems - of world population and hunger, of peace, of energy and mineral resources, of environmental pollution, of poverty - we must broaden and deepen our knowledge of nature's laws, and we must broaden and deepen our understanding of the laws of human behavior.

My main issue is sustainability of the Earth, and protection of those animals and people who dwell here.

Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.

Like I said, I'm more worried long term about the environmental issues then the use of arms.

Unless we keep this planet healthy, everything else is for naught.

So often we talk about saving the planet, but what we really mean is to save the planet the way it is, so we can live here. So that is can sustain us. Because the planet doesn't need to be saved. It doesn't care if all the squirrels, elephants, and trees die and there's just a couple of amoebas floating around at the poles.