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

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.

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 "Three Cups of Tea" I was fairly critical of the military. And I mentioned that they're laptop warriors and there's no boots on the ground. But I can say now that they've gone through a tremendous learning curve.

Really, what education does is it gives opportunity, but it also gives hope.

The people of Pakistan are some of the most hospitable, kinds and generous people I have met anywhere, in the over 70 countries I have visited in my lifetime.

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