What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you have ever made — of money, time, or energy?
Recorded Wangari Maathai said elsewhere, not written here
Tree planting became a natural choice to address some of the initial basic needs identified by women. Also, tree planting is simple, attainable and guarantees quick, successful results within a reasonable amount time. This sustains interest and commitment.

Oslo City Hall, The Nobel Foundation, 10 December 2004 source ↗

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Kobe Bryant United States basketball player, Los Angeles Lakers, 1996–2016
And so I ran. I ran up and down every court After every loose ball for you. You asked for my hustle I gave you my heart Because it came with so much more.
Recorded Retirement poem, The Players' Tribune, 29 November 2015 source ↗
Emmanuelle Charpentier Microbiologist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 2020
And also I have to say this is also part of the reason why I approached Jennifer Doudna, also, you know, we were very much in line in the way to do very precise research. It was not … it was fast but precise, and deep. For this we recognised one another – we are the same type of scientist who, you know, want to see the details of the data.
Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded shortly after the prize announcement, Nobel Prize Outreach, 7 October 2020 source ↗
Bill Clinton 42nd President of the United States, 1993–2001
My job was basically to be a delivery boy for all kinds of things, but they also — because I was at Georgetown and studying international affairs, I was assigned to read six newspapers a day and clip the most relevant articles. This is the technology we used. You couldn’t scan articles. There was no “online.” There was nothing, right? So I would read the newspapers, clip the articles I thought they ought to read, put them on a routing slip, which had on it the names of the senior staff of the committee and all the senators who were committee members. And I would send it to the senior staff, and they would decide whether to send any of them on, but I don’t think I’d have won a Rhodes Scholarship if I hadn’t been a clerk on the Foreign Relations Committee. Nobody else I was competing with read six newspapers a day, and they actually paid me good money to read The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Star, which existed then, The Baltimore Sun , The St. Louis Post Dispatch , and then we alternated — and — oh, and The Wall Street Journal . We read them every day. Those were the six papers we read. I did, and then that’s what the senators got.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
Demis Hassabis Co-founder and chief executive of Google DeepMind; Nobel laureate in Chemistry
I think chess — actually, a number of things that I learned when I was young — it wasn't so much the chess itself; it was the skills that you were training while you were playing chess. So problem-solving, imagination, creative thinking, strategic thinking, all of these things — if you play chess to a high level, what you're really honing is those meta-skills. And I realized from quite young, that's one of the reasons I liked chess was this is a great practice for me to get good — sort of like a mental gym, if you like — to get really good at those other skills, which you could then translate to all sorts of other subjects like science or business.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 2017 source ↗

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Question What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? Values & belief
Initially, the work was difficult because historically our people have been persuaded to believe that because they are poor, they lack not only capital, but also knowledge and skills to address their challenges. Instead they are conditioned to believe that solutions to their problems must come from 'outside'.
Recorded Oslo City Hall, The Nobel Foundation, 10 December 2004 source ↗

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