Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai S.St is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai's advocacy has since grown into an international movement...
NationalityPakistani
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth12 July 1997
CityMingora, Pakistan
CountryPakistan
I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.
I thought that words and books and pens were more powerful than guns.
We must believe in the power and strength of our words. Our words can change the world.
We have to change this idea that women are only supposed to work in the house... Women should go out and be what they want
We are human beings, and this is the part of our human nature, that we don't learn the importance of anything until it's snatched from our hands.
There should be no discrimination against languages people speak, skin color, or religion.
When I look at my goal, my goal is peace.
This is the philosophy of nonviolence that I have learned from Gandhi, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa.
It is not time to tell the leaders to realize how important education is - they already know it - their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action.
Once I had asked God for one or two extra inches in height, but instead he made me as tall as the sky, so high that I could not measure myself.
We realize the importance of light when we see darkness. We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced. In the same way when we were in Swat, we realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns.
I reassured my mother that it didn’t matter to me if my face was not symmetrical. Me, who had always cared about my appearance, how my hair looked! But when you see death, things change. “It doesn’t matter if I can’t smile or blink properly,” I told her. “I’m still me, Malala. The important thing is God has given me my life.
I want world leaders to choose books over bullets...We can afford to give every girl 12 years of free education. It is absolutely in our power, and when we do, we will realize a whole new world of possibility.
I would tell him that shoot me but first listen to me. And I would tell him that education is my right and education is the right of your daughter and son a well. And I'm speaking up for them. I'm speaking up for peace.