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.

Slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.