Quite often when you help poor people, they don't think about the environment. They think about survival.

It is wonderful when you don't have the fear, and a lot of the time I don't ... I focus on what needs to be done instead.

We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.

Culture is coded wisdom.

We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind.

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.

When I first started, it was really an innocent response to the needs of women in rural areas. When we started planting trees to meet their needs, there was nothing beyond that. I did not see all the issues that I have to come to deal with.

Because I was a woman, I was vulnerable. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman.'

You can educate people on how to preempt their own conflict.

Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.

We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all.

It would be good for us Africans to accept ourselves as we are and recapture some of the positive aspects of our culture.

You can make a lot of speeches, but the real thing is when you dig a hole, plant a tree, give it water, and make it survive. That's what makes the difference.

As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. Life is a journey and a struggle, she had said. We cannot control it, but we can make the best of any situation. I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it.

I stand before you and the world humbled by this recognition and uplifted by the honour of being the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. As the first African woman to receive this prize, I accept it on behalf of the people of Kenya and Africa, and indeed the world. I am especially mindful of women and the girl child. I hope it will encourage them to raise their voices and take more space for leadership.

I'm sure the government of Qatar is not coming in to grow food for the people of Kenya; it's coming to grow food to sell. If it can also sell to the people of Kenya, well, then good. I think that the moves can be helpful, but I think that the history that Africa knows, as I say in my book, has been a history of exploitation.

African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are -- to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.

The people are learning that you cannot leave decisions only to leaders. Local groups have to create the political will for change, rather than waiting for others to do things for them. That is where positive, and sustainable, change begins.

When people can't use you, they ridicule what you represent. I was lucky that I understood that, because when one does not understand that, it is very easy to be broken and to be subdued.

We see that the environment is something to exploit, because we see the environment in terms of minerals for example, or forests, or even raw materials that we produce on our land, or even land itself. We see it in terms of what we can exploit rather than the medium in which all of these activities have to take place.