Top 200 Malala Yousafzai Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “When you are caught between military and militants, there is no good.”

— Malala Yousafzai

152. “The Taliban is against education because they think that when a child reads a book or learns English or studies science he or she will become Westernized. But I said, “Education is education. We should learn everything and then choose which path to follow.” Education is neither Eastern nor Western, it is human.”

— Malala Yousafzai

153. “When I heard stories of the atrocities in Afghanistan I felt proud to be in Swat. “Here a girl can go to school,” I used to say. But the Taliban were right around the corner and were Pashtuns like us. For me the valley was a sunny place and I couldn’t see the clouds gathering behind the mountains. My father used to say, “I will protect your freedom, Malala. Carry on with your.”

— Malala Yousafzai

154. “So, yes, the Taliban have shot me. But they can only shoot a body. They cannot shoot my dreams, they cannot kill my beliefs and they cannot stop my campaign to see every girl and every boy in school.”

— Malala Yousafzai

155. “Some people are afraid of ghosts, some of spiders or snakes- in those days we were afraid of our fellow human beings.”

— Malala Yousafzai

156. “It’s not that passing books on is a bad practice,′ he says. ‘It’s just I so wanted a new book, unmarked by another student and bought with my father’s money.”

— Malala Yousafzai

157. “Its as if you planted a tree and nurtured it – you have the right to sit in its shade.”

— Malala Yousafzai

158. “To be displaced, on top of everything else, is to worry about being a burden on others.”

— Malala Yousafzai

159. “I didn’t write anything about it in my diary. If they had caught us they would have flogged or even slaughtered us as they had Shabana. Some people are afraid of ghosts, some of spiders or snakes – in those days we were afraid of our fellow human beings.”

— Malala Yousafzai

160. “I immediately understood the extent of my privilege: Where I saw so many problems, they saw opportunities.”

— Malala Yousafzai

161. “I think it’s time that people update themselves, educate themselves, and inform themselves.”

— Malala Yousafzai

162. “I started writing my own speeches and changing the way I delivered them, from my heart rather than from a sheet of paper.”

— Malala Yousafzai

163. “Maybe I’d take off my shoes and hit him, but then I’d think if I did that there would be no difference between me and a terrorist. It would be better to plead, ‘OK, shoot me, but first listen to me. What you are doing is wrong. I’m not against you personally, I just want every girl to go to school.”

— Malala Yousafzai

164. “If you want to resolve a dispute, or come out from conflict, the very first thing is to speak the truth. If you have a headache, and tell the doctor you have a stomach ache, how can the doctor help? You must speak the truth. The truth will abolish fear.”

— Malala Yousafzai

165. “My father’s voice is so loud my mother often jokes that he doesn’t need to make phone calls, he can just shout.”

— Malala Yousafzai

166. “As I watched my brothers run up to the roof to launch their kites, I wondered how free I could ever really be.”

— Malala Yousafzai

167. “To sit down on a chair and read my books with all my friends at school is my right. To see each and every human being with a smile of happiness is my wish. I am Malala. My world has changed but I have not.”

— Malala Yousafzai

168. “Manual workers made a great contribution to our society but received no recognition, and this is the reason so many of them joined the Taliban – to finally achieve status and power.”

— Malala Yousafzai

169. “It’s horrible to feel unworthy in the eyes of your parents.”

— Malala Yousafzai

170. “Mahatma Gandhi said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

— Malala Yousafzai

171. “How great God is! He has given us eyes to see the beauty of the world, hands to touch it, a nose to experience all its fragrance, and a heart to appreciate it all. But we don’t realize how miraculous our senses are until we lose one.”

— Malala Yousafzai

172. “He described what was happening in Afghanistan as a “war between two elephants” – the US and the Soviet Union – not our war, and said that we Pashtuns were “like the grass crushed by the hooves of two fierce beasts.”

— Malala Yousafzai

173. “I might have been calm, but my dear father was near tears. ‘Are you all right, jani?’ he said. ‘Aba,’ I said, trying to reassure him. ‘Everybody knows they will die someday. No one can stop death. It doesn’t matter if it comes from a Talib or from cancer.”

— Malala Yousafzai

174. “Un bambino, un insegnante, una penna e un libro possono cambiare il mondo.”

— Malala Yousafzai

175. “My mother was always trying to think up plans for what she would do if the Taliban came. She thought of sleeping with a knife under her pillow. I said I could sneak into the toilet and call the police. My brothers and I thought of digging a tunnel. Once again I prayed for a magic wand to make the Taliban disappear.”

— Malala Yousafzai

176. “They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

— Malala Yousafzai

177. “How great God is! He has given us eyes to see the beauty of the world, hands to touch it, a nose to experience all its fragrance and a heart to appreciate it all. But we don’t realise how miraculous our senses are until we lose one. A Talib had fired 3 shots at point-blank range at 3 girls in a school bus – and none os us was killed. One person had tried to silence me. And millions spoke out. Those were miracles too.”

— Malala Yousafzai

178. “He is right. I want to learn and be trained well with the weapon of knowledge. Then I will be able to fight more effectively for my cause.”

— Malala Yousafzai

179. “I will protect your freedom, Malala. Carry on with your dreams.”

— Malala Yousafzai

180. “I had been born into a sort of democracy in which for ten years Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif kept replacing each other, none of their governments ever completing a term and always accusing each other of corruption.”

— Malala Yousafzai

181. “If you help someone in need you might also receive unexpected aid.”

— Malala Yousafzai

182. “I said to myself, ‘Malala, be brave. You must not be afraid of anyone. You are only trying to get an education. You are not committing a crime.”

— Malala Yousafzai

183. “Eid happens twice a year – Eid ul-Fitr or “Small Eid” marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month, and Eid ul-Azha or “Big Eid” commemorates the Prophet Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son Ismail to God.”

— Malala Yousafzai

184. “When I got home, I cried and cried. I didn’t want to stop learning. I was only eleven years old, but I felt as though I had lost everything.”

— Malala Yousafzai

185. “In Pakistan when women say they want independence, people think this means we don’t want to obey our fathers, brothers or husbands. But it does not mean that. It means we want to make decisions for ourselves. We want to be free to go to school or to go to work. Nowhere is it written in the Quran that a woman should be dependent on a man. The word has not come down from the heavens to tell us that every woman should listen to a man.”

— Malala Yousafzai

186. “I sat on the rocks and thought about the fact that across the water were lands where women were free.”

— Malala Yousafzai

187. “People prayed to God to spare me, and I was spared for a reason – to use my life for helping people.”

— Malala Yousafzai

188. “The Taliban is not an organised force like we imagine,’ said my father’s friend Hidayatullah when they discussed it. ‘It’s a mentality, and this mentality is everywhere in Pakistan. Someone who is against America, against the Pakistan establishment, against English law, he has been infected by the Taliban.”

— Malala Yousafzai

189. “This is not the Stone Age,” I said. “But it feels like we are going backward. Girls are getting more deprived of our rights.” I spoke about how much I loved school. About how important it was to keep learning. “We are afraid of no one, and we will continue our education. This is our dream.” And I knew in that instant that it wasn’t me, Malala, speaking; my voice was the voice of so many others who wanted to speak but couldn’t.”

— Malala Yousafzai

190. “We Pashtuns are split between Pakistan and Afghanistan and don’t really recognize the border that the British drew more than 100 years ago.”

— Malala Yousafzai

191. “I remembered a tapa my grandmother used to recite: ‘No Pashtun leaves his land of his own sweet will, Either he leaves from poverty or he leaves for love.”

— Malala Yousafzai

192. “They told us if they kill all the lions the wildlife will disappear, so now those who become warriors are those with higher education, not those who kill lions.”

— Malala Yousafzai

193. “The Pashton took revenge after twenty years and another said it was taken too soon.”

— Malala Yousafzai

194. “My cousins made fun of me for my city ways. I did not like going barefoot. I read books and I had a different accent and used slang expressions from Mingora. My clothes were often from shops and not homemade like theirs.”

— Malala Yousafzai

195. “We Pashtuns love shoes but don’t love the cobbler; we love our scarves and blankets but do not respect the weaver. Manual workers made a great contribution to our society but received no recognition, and this is the reason so many of them joined the Taliban – to finally achieve status and power.”

— Malala Yousafzai

196. “Only learn what God says. His words are divine messages, which you are free and independent to interpret.”

— Malala Yousafzai

197. “Does not matter what language you choose, the important thing is the words you use to express yourself.”

— Malala Yousafzai

198. “My world has changed but I have not.”

— Malala Yousafzai

199. “I had grown up hearing the word terrorism, but I never really understood what it meant. Until now. Terrorism is different from war-where soldiers face one another in battle. Terrorism is fear all around you. It is going to sleep at night and not knowing what horrors the next day will bring.”

— Malala Yousafzai

200. “But God has also given us the power to forget, so that when the tragedy is over we carry on as normal.”

— Malala Yousafzai