Top 63 Quotes & Sayings by Greg Mortenson

Yes, I first visited Korphe village, Braldu valley, Baltistan, Pakistan, after failing to summit K2 in 1993, and met Haji Ali, a long time dear mentor and friend. My second visit to Korphe was in 1994.

Liberals, conservatives, Muslims, Jews, Christians, and I find - I think education is something that can bring us together.

But what I really believe is education is a key to pretty much everything - prosperity, economics, peace, stability.

I decided in '96 to dedicate my life to mostly promoting literacy and education for girls in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Really, what education does is it gives opportunity, but it also gives hope.

One thing that I noticed is having met some former Taliban is even they, as children, grew up being indoctrinated. They grew up in violence. They grew up in war. They were taught to hate. They were, they grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world.

I say if you fight terrorism, it's based in fear, but if you promote peace, it's based on hope.

Yes, I was detained for eight days in Waziristan in 1996. It was against my will, and my passport and money were taken from me. I was not mistreated or harmed, but I was also not allowed to leave.

The Pathan people of Waziristan are proud people who I greatly admire.

In 'Three Cups of Tea' I was fairly critical of the military. And I mentioned that they're laptop warriors and there's no boots on the ground. But I can say now that they've gone through a tremendous learning curve.

If you look at the 9/11 highjackers, certainly they were educated, some even had university degrees, but nobody really checked their mothers, who were nearly all illiterate.

My father ended up starting the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, which is on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. My mother started a school.

I used to climb mountains a lot; I decided to go to Pakistan to climb K2, the world's second-highest mountain. I didn't get quite to the top.

Once I started the first school, I realized this is what my life is meant to be, is to promote education and help kids go to school, and that's very clear.

When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.

If you really want to change a culture... empower women.

In Muslim societies, a person who has been manipulated unto believing in extremist violence or terrorism often seeks the permission of his mother before he may join a militant jihad and educated women as a rule, tend to withhold their blessings from such things.

Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they've learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.

It is my vision that we all will dedicate the next decade to achieve universal literacy and education for all children, especially for girls. More than 145 million of the world's children are deprived of education due to poverty, exploitation, slavery, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and corrupt governments. May Three Cups of Tea be a catalyst to bring the gift of literacy to each of those children who deserves a chance to go to school.

When ordinary human beings perform extraordinary acts of generosity, endurance or compassion, we are all made richer by their example. Like the rivers that flow out of the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, the inspiration they generate washes down to the rest of us. It waters everyone's fields.

Our greatest ally in the Pakistan region of turmoil is the moderate Muslim majority, who we must reach out to and embrace if we ever are to have peace for our children.

I think Americans yearn for other alternatives to peace, than the path our government has currently taken, and perhaps why there is great interest in this book, and the message to fight poverty and ignorance with education.

If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs.

When your kids accomplish something it means much more than anything you've done.

I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.

The solution to terrorism is education, not bombs.

Yes, I first visited Korphe village, Braldu valley, Baltistan, Pakistan, after failing to summit K2 in 1993, and met Haji Ali, a long time dear mentor and friend. My second visit to Korphe was in 19

Slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

The people of Pakistan are some of the most hospitable, kinds and generous people I have met anywhere, in the over 70 countries I have visited in my lifetime.

Once I started the first school, I realized this is what my life is meant to be, is to promote education and help kids go to school and that's very clear.

Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' Sign in Skardu

The tune was too ingrained for Mortenson to consider the novelty of this moment- an American, lost in Pakistan, singing a German hymn in Swahili.

The older I get, the more I appreciate my childhood. It was paradise.

Because most of the girls were still in mourning and all of them had lost their textbooks, even pencils and pens, Shaukat Ali began the first classes by reading to them from poetry and religious texts. "Reading, literature, and spirituality are good for the soul," he told them. "So we will start with these studies.

You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength. In America’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with those people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.

And they did it with something that is basicly worthless in our society - pennies. But overseas, pennies can move mountains

If you really want to change a culture to empower women improve basic hygiene and health care and fight high rates of infant mortality the answer is to educate girls.

Everywhere I go in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I am touched by the fierce desire for education, and the outpouring of hospitality and generosity. The most important ingredient is the relationships. The process takes "Three Cups of Tea". First you are a stranger, second a friend, and the third, you become family, but the process takes several years. Here in America, we have 8 second sound bytes, 2 minute football drills, and thirty minute power lunches.

In America we now live more in fear than in hope, and eventually that will lead to ignorance and hatred. We need to have optimism that the world can be a better place, and we can leave a legacy for our children. Being bilingual, travel and studying geography, culture and religions can help.

A wise man from my home once told me that these mountains have seen far too much suffering and killing, and that each rock and every boulder you see represents a mujahadeen who died fighting either the Russians or the Taliban. Then the man went on to say that now that the fighting is finished, it is time to build a new era of peace-and the first step in that process is to take up the stones and start turning them into schools.

You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.

I'm no military expert, and these figures might not be exactly right,' I said. 'But as best I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles, tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced, non extremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?

The Koran and Islam is about submission, justice and compassion. All people of the "book" - which means the Torah, Koran and Bible are accorded equal respect under Islam.

Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.

According to UNESCO: there are over 154 million children in the world deprived of education due to poverty, slavery, racism, religious extremism, gender discrimination, and geographical isolation. The cost to educate a child in the third world is about $ 1 per month per child. To achieve global literacy, the investment would be $ 8 billion per year for 15 years.

I've had two fatwas issued against me by despot mullahs opposed to education - and important to know that the great majority of Imams and Islamic religious leaders support education for all children.

By the way, although the subtitle of the book "Three Cups of Tea" is "fighting terror, one school at a time", that was not my choice, as fighting terror is not why I do this, I do it to promote peace, and give hope and opportunity to children deprived of education.

There is still a desperate need for investment and promotion of education in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Official figures put Pakistan literacy rate over 45%, but in many rural areas we work it is about 10-15%, and for girls even lower.

...education is a sacred thing, and the pledge to build a school is a commitment that cannot be surrendered or broken, regardless of how long it may take, how many obstacles must be surmounted, or how much money it will cost. It is by such promises that the balance sheet of one's life is measured.

Just as the Torah and Bible teach concern for those in distress, the Koran instructs all Muslims to make caring for widows, orphans, and refugees a priority.

My work to promote education and literacy in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan has become my life's mission. This takes a full-time commitment 365 24/7.

Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned in my life...We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We're the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

In times of war, you often hear leaders—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—saying, ‘God is on our side.’ But that isn’t true. In war, God is on the side of refugees, widows, and orphans.

If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.

Some of the most memorable moments I've had is to have my family along - who are our greatest ambassadors for peace. Politics will never bring peace, but people will.

In tribal society, the most important thing to do when civilians are killed in a skirmish is to acknowledge the deaths, and provide compensation. When tribal clans fight, the victor is required to take care of the vanquished widows and orphans, which puts a limitation on bloodshed, and tempers warring groups to try and negotiate a compromise.

I've actually spent about half of my life overseas in the third world. I grew up in Tanzania, East Africa, and later lived in South-West Asia. In general, everywhere I go, I am treated with great respect and hospitality, but I need to be sensitive to cultural, tribal and ethical customs of the local people. In this modern era of technology, I think we forget that the most important thing when traveling is to listen and learn, and establish relationship, and not be hidden behind technology like Goretex, emails, satellite phones, and insulated from the people around you.

He was a man who understood the virtue of small things.

Certainly I am sometimes afraid, but my hope is greater than my fear, and the biggest enemy we all face is ignorance which breeds hatred, whether it be in America, or Afghanistan, or anywhere. We owe it to our children that we may give them all a legacy of peace, but it will take courage and compassion.

We all sat there laughing and sipping tea peacefully, an infidel and representatives from three warring sects of Islam. And I thought if we can get along this well, we can accomplish anything. The British policy was ‘divide and conquer.’ But I say ‘unite and conquer.