Helena > Helena's Quotes

“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“In Ojibwe and Cree culture, leadership didn't mean power; it meant caring.”
― Tanya Talaga, All Our Relations US Edition: Finding the Path Forward

“There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.”
― Wangari Maathai, Unbowed

“The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price. That is the problem.”
― Wangari Maathai

“Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from the land, but instill in them even more respect for it, because educated people are in a position to understand what is being lost. The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. As I told the foresters, and the women, you don't need a diploma to plant a tree.”
― Wangari Maathai, Unbowed

“I’m very conscious of the fact that you can’t do it alone. It’s teamwork. When you do it alone you run the risk that when you are no longer there nobody else will do it.”
― Wangari Maathai, The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience

“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own - indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come”
― Wangari Maathai

“Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect.”
― Wangari Maathai

“Finally I was able to see that if I had a contribution I wanted to make, I must do it, despite what others said. That I was OK the way I was. That it was all right to be strong.”
― Wangari Maathai

“Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out.”
― Wangari Maathai

“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and hope.”
― Wangari Maathai

“There comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness . . . that time is now.”
― Wangari Maathai

“If you are conditioned not to care, you are conditioned to indifference, and there is a violence to that indifference.”
― Tanya Talaga, All Our Relations US Edition: Finding the Path Forward

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince