Wangari Maathai Quotes

The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes.

We used to wage war on poverty—not poor people.

If we are serious about breaking cycles of poverty, we have to change this (economy).

The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.

Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty.

People don't need to become more aware of poverty - they need to know how to end it.

Do we have the will to make poverty history?

Restore the spinning wheel to its place and you will solve the problem of poverty.

Microloans enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship.

Traditional charity and aid are never going to solve the problems of poverty.

If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty

You can't help the poor by becoming one of them.

The only really effective means of enabling States to deal with the grave problem of poverty is to provide them with the necessary resources through foreign financial aid - public and private - granted under reasonable conditions, within the framework of international commercial relations regulated with fairness.

People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They're not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives.

One ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the causes of poverty rather than to him, a creature who is merely its symptom.

Poverty isn’t solved with donations.

Women must be full partners in development, so they can lift themselves and their communities out of poverty.

Microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge

Corruption is a major cause of poverty as well as a barrier to overcoming it. The two scourges feed off each other, locking their populations in a cycle of misery. Corruption must be vigorously addressed if aid is to make a real difference in freeing people from poverty.

Whose fault is it if poor Ireland still continues poor?

It would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going?

Microfinance is an idea whose time has come.

[T]he more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer . . . [taking] away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence of somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health for support in age and sickness.

Time and again we’ve seen that reducing poverty comes down to economic opportunity-not just connecting the poor to services like banking, but ensuring they can be producers on fair terms in the global economy.

The results of the Great Society experiments started coming in and began showing that, for all its good intentions, the War on Poverty was causing irreparable damage to the very communities it was designed to help.