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

You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength. In America’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with those people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.

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.

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.

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

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

There is still a desperate need for investment and promotion of education in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Official figures put Pakistan literacy rate over 45%, but in many rural areas we work it is about 10-15%, and for girls even lower.