Greg Mortenson
Greg Mortenson
Greg Mortensonis 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, from which he was forced to resign as executive director following an investigation by the Montana attorney general, and the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
girl hands bombs
You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.
ties camels trust-in-allah
Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' Sign in Skardu
past perspective found
. . . hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.
people world who-we-are
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.
business important down-and
Slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.
girl religious children
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.
caring priorities widows
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.
appreciate childhood paradise
The older I get, the more I appreciate my childhood. It was paradise.
inspiration compassion rivers
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.
men virtue understood
He was a man who understood the virtue of small things.
wise home school
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.
military school thinking
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?
mother believe blessing
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.
empowering culture want
If you really want to change a culture... empower women.