Disempowerment - whether defined in terms of a lack of self-confidence , apathy, fear, or an inability to take charge of one's own life - is perhaps the most unrecognised problem in Africa today.

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

You cannot enslave a mind that knows itself. That values itself. That understands itself.

You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.

When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.

No matter who or where we are, or what our capabilities, we are called to do the best we can.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!

You have to rely on whatever sparks you have inside.

True maturity is in attitude and a true attitude is maturity.

Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

The more delicate and ambitious the soul, the further do dreams estrange it from possible things.

In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.

When you have the most votes of anybody that tells you where the party is. I think the party got lost to a certain extent.

We do want to drive out the beast in man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him.

No one can be Gilda twenty-four hours a day.

In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.