Wangari Maathai Quotes

The world is rich enought today that the idea of millions of children dying of disease is unacceptable. We have the resouurces and know how to prevent this.

I work with poor kids. I work in the fight against HIV.

Science can lift people out of poverty and cure disease. That, in turn, will reduce civil unrest.

Miriam Were has made outstanding contributions to public health in the developing world. She brings basic medical services to women and children in East Africa.

In the United States, I feel like polio doesn't exist, but it very much does. I've been to many countries and saw how lucky we are that we can go straight to the doctor or the ER in the U.S. I would love for moms in other countries to not experience my fears.

We are the ones who work every day with people who are suffering because they don't have health care. We cannot turn our backs on them, so for us, health care reform is a faith-based response to human need.

What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.

To block the construction of centralized power projects, as not being 'appropriate' or 'sustainable' is to condemn billions of people to continued poverty and disease-and millions to premature death.

Malaria kills and its main victims are children and women. We can stop this scourge so people can live with dignity and go to work and school.

In South Africa one in four women have AIDS. When you are there it is shocking. So many people are dying from the disease and the same number are getting the disease each year. My main goal was to learn and call attention to some of the things that were happening.

We need a cost-effective, high-quality health care system, guaranteeing health care to all of our people as a right.

Obviously, it's a big problem how do we provide quality care to the maximum number of people. And it's not an easy problem to solve.

Football is being used as a language in that project...The vital message being communicated to the boys and young men is about safe sex, the use of condoms and preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people seeking to rise out of poverty and backwardness.

In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms.

We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.

The best way to deal with AIDS is through education. So we need a really widespread AIDS education program. In fact, what we need in Burma is education of all kinds - political, economic, and medical. AIDS education would be just part of a whole program for education, which is so badly needed in our country.

As a Goodwill Ambassador for YouthAIDS, I've learned that the face of AIDS is increasingly young and female. By educating young people and empowering them to make the right choices we can stop the spread of HIV/AIDS

Place-based initiatives can provide a useful framework to judge our progress in raising people out of poverty. They allow us to see whether or not a neighborhood is improving and its residents are living better.

I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.

You can't lift people out of poverty simply by tweaking the tax system, or by raising the minimum wage by a few cents, or by reducing student debt slightly. These might be necessary components of a larger anti-poverty program, but you have to accept they are pieces of a much larger puzzle.

You know, no one should be marginalized in society when it comes to health. And, you know, we have - as a foundation, we have tried to champion those people [sex workers, needle users, intravenous drug users, prostitutes] and be by - be by their side and say, listen, these people cannot be forgotten. If you forget about them, then the disease is never going to go away.

The evidence of history speaks with a single voice. I do not know any exception to the proposition that if you compare like with like, the freer the system, the better off the ordinary poor people have been.

The human spirit is extraordinary. If we give the 3 billion people who live in poverty the opportunity to change their lives, they will. For too long, we've looked at needing to "save" these people - with an emphasis on "these people" - rather than removing the constraints keeping them from solving their own problems.

Hillary Clinton is on record supporting a doubling of community health centers in this country, which will mean that tens of millions of people - poor people - will have access to health care that do not have it today. Is that significant? It is very significant.