Quotes About Greg Mortenson

#1. We shall pursue our dreams until [we] reach[ ... ] it. Or fail[ ... ] trying.

Greg Mortenson

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

Greg Mortenson

#3. 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

#4. When women take charge, things start to get out of control really fast.

Greg Mortenson

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. But what you're trying to do is much more difficult than climbing K2

Greg Mortenson

#9. 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

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

Greg Mortenson

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

Greg Mortenson

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

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

Greg Mortenson

#17. Hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.

Greg Mortenson

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

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

Greg Mortenson

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

Greg Mortenson

#26. 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

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

Greg Mortenson

#28. 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

#29. [I]f [we] believe in [ourselves], [we] can accomplish anything.

Greg Mortenson

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

Greg Mortenson

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. The solution to terrorism is education, not bombs.

Greg Mortenson

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. The Balti had as many names for rock as the Inuit have for snow.

Greg Mortenson

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

Greg Mortenson

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

Greg Mortenson

#40. 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

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

Greg Mortenson

#42. 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

#43. 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

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

Greg Mortenson

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

Greg Mortenson

#46. 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

#47. 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

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

Greg Mortenson

#49. 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

#50. 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