According to UNESCO: there are over 154 million children in the world deprived of education due to poverty, slavery, racism, religious extremism, gender discrimination, and geographical isolation. The cost to educate a child in the third world is about $ 1 per month per child. To achieve global literacy, the investment would be $ 8 billion per year for 15 years.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.