Top 200 Malala Yousafzai Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “If I am speaking for my rights, for the rights of girls, I am not doing anything wrong. It’s my duty to do so. God wants to see how we behave in such situations. There is a saying in the Quran, “The falsehood has to go and the truth will prevail.” If one man, Fazlullah, can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it? I wondered. I prayed to God every night to give me strength.”

— Malala Yousafzai

153. “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

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

— Malala Yousafzai

155. “If you hit a Talib with your shoe, there is no difference between him and you. You must not treat others with cruelty. You must fight them with peace and dialogue.”

— Malala Yousafzai

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

— Malala Yousafzai

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

— Malala Yousafzai

158. “It’s a kind of Romeo and Juliet story in which Gul Makai and Musa Khan meet at school and fall in love. But they are from different tribes, so their love causes a war. However, unlike Shakespeare’s play their story doesn’t end in tragedy. Gul Makai uses the Holy Quran to teach her elders that war is bad and they eventually stop fighting and allow the lovers to unite.”

— Malala Yousafzai

159. “When you are caught between military and militants, there is no good.”

— Malala Yousafzai

160. “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

161. “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”

— Malala Yousafzai

162. “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

163. “It was all confusing. I used to want to become a doctor, but after everything we had been through, I began to think that becoming a political leader might be a better choice. Our country had so many problems. Maybe someday I could help solve them.”

— Malala Yousafzai

164. “How was I bringing shame? I wanted to ask him. I was a child, a ten-year-old girl. A little girl who liked playing hide-and-seek and studying science. I was angry, but I knew it would do no good to try to reason with him. I knew I should have been afraid, but I only felt frustration.”

— Malala Yousafzai

165. “I was reminded of our history lessons, in which we learned about the loot or bounty an army enjoys when a battle is won. I began to see the awards and recognition just like that. They were little jewels without much meaning. I needed to concentrate on winning the war.”

— Malala Yousafzai

166. “It is my belief God sends the solution first and the problem later,” replied Dr. Javid.”

— Malala Yousafzai

167. “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

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

— Malala Yousafzai

169. “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

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

— Malala Yousafzai

171. “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

172. “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

173. “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

174. “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

175. “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

176. “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

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

— Malala Yousafzai

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

— Malala Yousafzai

179. “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

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

— Malala Yousafzai

181. “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

182. “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

183. “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

184. “For us girls that doorway was like a magical entrance to our own special world. As we skipped through, we cast off our headscarves like winds puffing away clouds to make way for the sun then ran helter-skelter up the steps. At the top of the steps was an open courtyard with doors to all the classrooms.”

— Malala Yousafzai

185. “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

186. “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

187. “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

188. “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

189. “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

190. “But I learned another lesson watching the show. Although Betty and her friends had certain rights, women in the United States were still not completely equal; their images were used to sell things. In some ways, I decided, women are showpieces in American society, too.”

— Malala Yousafzai

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

— Malala Yousafzai

192. “Someone gave me a copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a fable about a shepherd boy who travels to the Pyramids in search of treasure when all the time it’s at home. I loved that book and read it over and over again. ‘When you want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it,’ it says. I don’t think that Paulo Coelho had come across the Taliban or our useless politicians.”

— Malala Yousafzai

193. “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

194. “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

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

— Malala Yousafzai

196. “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

197. “Microphones made me feel as if I were speaking to the whole world. I had talked to only local TV stations and newspapers, but, still, I felt as if the wind would carry my words, the same way it scatters flower pollen in the spring, planting seeds all over the earth.”

— Malala Yousafzai

198. “In my part of the world most people are known by their sons. I am one of the few lucky fathers known by his daughter.”

— Malala Yousafzai

199. “How had I become so bold? I wondered. “Well, Malala,” I told myself, “you’re not doing anything wrong. You are speaking for peace, for your rights, for the rights of girls. That’s not wrong. That’s your duty.”

— Malala Yousafzai

200. “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