Quotes by Greg Mortenson

About Greg Mortenson:

Greg Mortenson is an American humanitarian, professional speaker, writer, and former mountaineer. He is a co-founder and former executive director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute and the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

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

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 ...

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 t...

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...

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

The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die.

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 boo...

Greg Mortenson

Profound silence would brood over the valley, even weighing down our spirits with indefinable heaviness. There can be no other place in the world where man feels himself so alone, so isolated, so completely ignored by nature, so incapable of entering...

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 a...

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

Haji Ali taught me to...slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

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, i...

Greg Mortenson

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

I don't do what I'm doing to fight terror. ... I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is maybe seventh or eighth on my list of priorities. But working over there, I've learned a few things. I've learned that terror doesn't happen because ...

Greg Mortenson

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

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

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

Greg Mortenson

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

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

Author Bio

  • NameGreg Mortenson
  • DescriptionAmerican mountaineer and humanitarian
  • BornDecember 27, 1957
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhilanthropist; Writer
  • AwardsAmerican Peace Award