Wangari Maathai Quotes

I love all of the ecosystems - mountains, deserts, rainforests. They're beautiful, and nature has so many different flavors to it.

Americans and Europeans share a common goal - to build an enduring peace based on freedom.

The wren and the nightingale sound nothing alike, but think how dull the world would be without the songs of both birds.-Miss Kanagawa

I’ve become obsessed with the idea of reconciliation, particularly reconciliation with nature but with people too, of course. I think that travel has been a kind of search for that, a pursuit for unity and even an attempt to contribute to a sense of unity.

We have heard much of the phrase, peace and friendship. This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, peace and friendship, in freedom. This, I think, is America's real message to the rest of the world.

Diversity creates harmony, and harmony creates beauty, balance, bounty and peace in nature and society, in agriculture and culture, in science and in politics.

Boughton says he has more ideas about heaven every day. He said, "Mainly I just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy.

I think people who worry about planetary health on geological scales are totally misguided, that's not the point at all.

The wonders of nature are endless.

I do think that the U.S. has an opportunity as a democracy to really exemplify what a religiously diverse society can be when it embraces the pluralism.

When you get out onto a glacier that's the size of Northern Ireland and it's so vast, and you're standing on top of it and you can see forever, it's so pure and clear that you can see for miles and miles and miles. You really do think, "Wow, there is a god!" You feel very humbled.

Development requires modification and transformation of the environment... the planet's capacity to support its people us being irreversibly reduced by the destruction and degradation of the biosphere and the need to understand the problem and take corrective action is becoming urgent.

The chief enemy of peace is the spirit of unreason itself: an inability to conceive alternatives, an unwillingness to reconsider old prejudices, to part with ideological obsessions, to entertain new ideas or to improve new plans.

I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.

I don't think you can be a good musician if you just listen to rap, or just the [type of music] you do. You gotta be open to other ideas.

The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth.

I always try to appreciate the most fleeting moments. The idea of the acrobats constantly tumbling and trying to adjust - I think that is what we do with aesthetics. It is a cyclical rhythm

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc.

Our goal is not victory of might but the vindication of right - not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

There is an inherently minimum set of essential concepts and current information, cognizance of which could lead to our operating our planet Earth to the lasting satisfaction and health of all humanity.

What I consistently say to young people - I say it in the United States, but I'll say it here in Germany and across Europe: Do not take for granted our systems of government and our way of life. I think there is a tendency, because we have lived in an era that has been largely stable and peaceful, at least in advanced countries, where living standards have generally gone up, there is a tendency I think to assume that that's always the case.

For us, not cooperating in the monopoly regimes of intellectual property rights and patents and biodiversity - saying "no" to patents on life, and developing intellectual ideas of resistance - is very much a continuation of Gandhian satyagraha. It is, for me, keeping life free in its diversity.

I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard.