QuoteProject
Why are fanatics so terrified of girls' education? Because there's no force more powerful to transform a society. The greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.
Nicholas Kristof
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote highlights the transformative power of girls' education in combating extremism.

Nicholas Kristof emphasizes that the education of girls is a crucial factor in social transformation and that it poses a greater threat to extremism than military interventions. By advocating for girls' education, he points to the idea that knowledge and empowerment can dismantle oppressive ideologies and lead to a more enlightened and progressive society.

Themes

EducationGirlsExtremismTransformationEmpowerment

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a speech advocating for girls' education during an educational conference.

More from Nicholas Kristof

One of our worst traits in journalism is that when we have a narrative in our minds, we often plug in anecdotes that confirm it. Thus we managed to portray President Gerald Ford, a first-rate athlete, as a klutz.
Nicholas KristofRead
A basic element of the American dream is equal access to education as the lubricant of social and economic mobility.
Nicholas KristofRead
Worrying about bills, food, or other problems leaves less capacity to think ahead or to exert self-discipline. So, poverty imposes a mental tax.
Nicholas KristofRead
Most moms and dads, they want to be good moms and dads. But it's an incredibly hard job when you are stressed out, when you are poor, when your life is in chaos. And giving them some of the tools to be better parents, to whittle away at that parenting gap, gives those kids a much better starting point in life.
Nicholas KristofRead
Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated.
Nicholas KristofRead
The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing.
Nicholas KristofRead

Similar quotes

If you want grown-ups to recycle, just tell their kids the importance of recycling, and they'll be all over it.
Bill NyeRead
To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.
Frantz FanonRead
As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.
A. S. ByattRead
Every film teaches you something; every experience on every film set with every co-star teaches you something. You learn something new. I think the challenge is to keep working harder and doing better.
Deepika PadukoneRead
Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they've learned. 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.
Greg MortensonRead
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.
John LubbockRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.