Greg Mortenson Quotes & Sayings

I don't want to teach Pakistani's children to think like Americans...I just want them to have a balanced, non-extremist education — Greg Mortenson

Hey be ur own heck of a person, and dont copy what other people do or say. cause then it just makes u look really bad, then that person who u copyied will get mad at u. so grow up a little — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

Eventually, I came to understand that a group of people who wield enormous power happen, oddly enough, to espouse some of the very same ideals imparted to me by people in Africa and central Asia who have no power at all. The reason for this, in my view, is that members of the armed forces have worked on the ground-in many cases, during three or four tours of duty-on a level that very few diplomats, academicians, journalists, or policy makers can match. And among other things, this experience has imbued soldiers with the gift of empathy. — Greg Mortenson

When women take charge, things start to get out of control really fast. — Greg Mortenson

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

What we are trying to do may be just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. — Greg Mortenson

I'm no military expert, and these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as 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 nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure? (295) — Greg Mortenson

[I]f [we] believe in [ourselves], [we] can accomplish anything. — Greg Mortenson

But what you're trying to do is much more difficult than climbing K2 — Greg Mortenson

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

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

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. — Greg Mortenson

Bashir paused to watch a live CNN feed ... Bashir was struck silent by the images of wailing Iraqi women carrying children's bodies out of the rubble of a bombed building.
As he studied the screen, Bashir's bullish shoulders slumped. "People like me are America's best friends in the region," Bashir said at last shaking his head ruefully, "I'm a moderate Msulim, an educated man. But watching this, even I could become a jihadi. How can Americans say they are making themselves safer?" Bashir asked, struggling not to direct his anger toward the large American target on the other side of the desk. "Your president Bush had done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against America for the next two hundred years. — Greg Mortenson

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

We shall pursue our dreams until [we] reach[ ... ] it. Or fail[ ... ] trying.
— Greg Mortenson

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

Isn't it better to live in ignorance of everything
asphalt and macadam, vehicles, telephones, televisions
to live in bliss without knowing it? — Greg Mortenson

They are a testament not only to the Afghans' hunger for literacy, but also to their willingness to pour scarce resources into this effort, even during a time of war. I have seen children studying in classrooms set up inside animal sheds, windowless basements, garages, and even an abandoned public toilet. We ourselves have run schools out of refugee tents, shipping containers, and the shells of bombed-out Soviet armored personnel carriers. The thirst for education over there is limitless. The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy represents what neither we not anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny. — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

Two decades of virtually uninterrupted fighting had made even the most dignified structures appear drunken, wounded, or lost. The entire city seemed to affirm the notion that warfare is a disease. — Greg Mortenson

Down there in the dark was the most technologically sophisticated navy strike force in the world, launching fighters and cruise missiles into Afghanistan ... I had to admit that what the Taliban was doing was brillant. Without satellites, without an air force, with even their primitive radar knocked out, they were ingenious enough to use plain old commercial flights to keep track of the fifth fleets positions. I realized that if we were counting on our military technology alone to win the war on terror, we had a lot of lessons to learn. — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

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

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

I was just an average bloke. It was the media that tried to transform me into a heroic figure. But I've learned through the years, as long as you don't believe all that rubbish about yourself, you can't come to too much harm.' - Sir Edmund Hillary — Greg Mortenson

Despite everything that has befallen us, do we not continue to hold the destiny of this shattered and magnificent nation, together with the future of all our children-girls and boys alike-in the palm of our hands? — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

I have always been dismayed by the West's failure - or unwillingness - to recognize that establishing secular schools that offer children a balanced and nonextremist form of education is probably the cheapest and most effective way of combating this kind of indoctrination. — Greg Mortenson

If you really want to change a culture ... empower women. — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

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. — Greg Mortenson

The solution to terrorism is education, not bombs. — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

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

By afternoon, a dense crowd had gathered around the Bedford as word spread that an enormous infidel in brown pajamas was loading a truck full of supplies for Muslim schoolchildren ... Mortenson's size-fourteen feet drew a steady stream of bouncing eyebrows and bawdy jokes from onlookers. Spectators shouted guesses at Mortenson's nationality as he worked. Bosnia and Chechnya were deemd the most likely source of this large mangy-looking man. When Mortenson, with his rapidly improving Urdu, interrupted the speculation to tell them he was American, the crowd looked at his sweat-soaked and dirt-grimed shalwar, at his smudged and oily skin, and several men told him they didn't think so. — Greg Mortenson

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

The Balti had as many names for rock as the Inuit have for snow. — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

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 standards of what we are to become. — Greg Mortenson

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

Osama, baah!" Bashir roared.
"Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. 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. That only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever. — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

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

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

I am told that in the heart of a vast, bowl-shaped valley deep inside the High Pamir where the sheep and the goats spend their summers grazing by the hundreds as far as the eye can see, there is a cold blue stream that meanders through emerald meadows until it spills into a small lake that carries the color of the sky and that the surface of this lake and the surrounding grasslands shiver in unison beneath the movement of a wind that never stops blowing. — Greg Mortenson

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

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

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. — Greg Mortenson

We're also extremely sensitive to the difference between literacy and ideology. It is our belief that the first helps to thwart intolerance, challenge dogma, and reinforce our common humanity. The second does the opposite. — Greg Mortenson

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. — Greg Mortenson

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

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. — Greg Mortenson

Today that legend is inscribed on the stones that were used to build the walls of the school, and as the water falls out of the sky and over those stones, the words of the legend are carried down from the mountains and into the fields and gardens and orchards of Afghanistan. And as the water and the words rush past, who can fail to turn to his neighbor and whisper, with humility and awe-if this is what the weakest, the least valued, the most neglected among us are capable of achieving, truly is there anything we cannot do? — Greg Mortenson

Hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past. — Greg Mortenson

Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - even die. — Greg Mortenson

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