I've had two fatwas issued against me by despot mullahs opposed to education - and important to know that the great majority of Imams and Islamic religious leaders support education for all children.

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.

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

If you really want to change a culture to empower women improve basic hygiene and health care and fight high rates of infant mortality the answer is to educate girls.

My father ended up starting the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, which is on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. My mother started a school.

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.

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

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

You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.

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

Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' Sign in Skardu

The function of a heart is to keep the body alive, I genuinely believe it is mind which takes care of everything else.

Where we are going to is closer than where we are coming from.

Kiss an angel good morning and love her like the devil when you get back home.

The second-sweetest set of three words in English is 'I don't know.'

The earth is, of course, not the geometric center of the universe. But it is certainly the center of our lives.

I always took it for granted that there would be life after Hollywood.

People have a natural tendency to read emotions out of faces, so when you see a face that is hyperreal but without the life behind the eyes, it's really off-putting and intriguing.

Sidney Poitier, who is class personified, said: Lou, youre a leading man because youre a good actor. Brought tears to my eyes.

Somewhere along the line I'd lost the will not to eat.

The first girl you go to bed with is always pretty.