Wangari Maathai Quotes
We do the right thing not to please people but because it's the only logically reasonable thing to do, as long as we are being honest with ourselves - even if we are the only ones.
Maathai, Wangari. Unbowed: A Memoir. Knopf, 2006.
In the early 21st century America’s world image, credibility, and popularity had plummeted to new lows. The George W. Bush administration spent millions of dollars on public diplomacy – public relations, propaganda, and image building using the techniques of Madison Avenue to change the world perception of America. Veteran diplomats like Kissinger advised that the Bush was going about it backwards. If America did the right things, world opinion would appreciate it and America’s credibility will follow as it has throughout most of the 20th century. Most foreign politicians and journalists tended to agree. It had been Bush’s policies and practices that had been disliked. They were understood, it was argued, and did not need to be better explained—just changed.
One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift she studied in the United States, earning a Bachelor's Degree from Mount St. Scholastica and a Master's Degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She went on to become the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy, receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in Kenya.
