Quote

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.

Greg Mortenson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Greg Mortenson
Age: 66
Born: 1957
Born: December 27
Humanitarian
Mountaineer
Nurse
Philanthropist
Writer
Rochester
Minnesota
Help
Helping
Kids
Promote
School
Realized
Firsts
Meant
First
Started
Life
Education
Clear

More quotes by Greg Mortenson

Image
I decided in '96 to dedicate my life to mostly promoting literacy and education for girls in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Greg Mortenson
Image
You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
The Pathan people of Waziristan are proud people who I greatly admire.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
the people who live in the last places - the people who are most neglected and least valued by the larger world - often represent the best of who we are and the finest standard of what we are meant to become. This is the power that last places hold over me, and why I have found it impossible to resist their pull.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' Sign in Skardu
Greg Mortenson
Image
If you really want to change a culture... empower women.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
The older I get, the more I appreciate my childhood. It was paradise.
Greg Mortenson
Image
Slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.
Greg Mortenson
Image
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.
Greg Mortenson
Image
. . . hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.
Greg Mortenson