Ishmael Beah Quotes

Education is a vacine for violence.

Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.

Let Jammu and Kashmir lead the way in the building of a new future for India. Let it set an example to the rest of India and the world by showing how the entire region can be transformed into a zone of peace, stability and prosperity.

We really need to put the best we have to offer within reach of our children. If we don't do that, we're going to get the generation we deserve.

Education, when delivered properly, can benefit a lot of people and make productive citizens out of those otherwise given no hope.

Really, what education does is it gives opportunity, but it also gives hope.

I speak not for myself but for those without voice... those who have fought for their rights... their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with dignity, their right to equality of opportunity, their right to be educated.

Dialogue and education for peace can help free our hearts from the impulse toward intolerance and the rejection of others.

We all ran barefooted on the dusty roads in our past, but now the Emperor wears shoes, and it is our responsibility to ensure that the barefooted child and the doting mother are afforded a holistic environment to realise their dreams and ambitions.

In 2005, I founded the Democratic Pacific Union, an international organization of 28 democratic countries to promote democracy, peace and prosperity in the Pacific region.

We believe that peace is not just signed papers, but rather a contract between generations for the building of a more promising and less threatening future.

I tried to instill a different motivation, to give them the security and the conviction that they were doing something good, something necessary, something useful - if you want to use a grandiose expression, that they were doing something for peace.

Conflict states just need someone to give them a chance. Nobody wants to be a failure.

For many child soldiers, war and violence are all they have ever known. If we don't take it upon ourselves to show them an alternative, then they're going to be soldiers forever, and they'll continue to be recruited and to participate in violence if another conflict starts five or 10 years down the road.

I always say kids are the future and if we can inspire them, the world will be a much better place.

I am building a foundation in Cameroon, and it's not just about the sport. The goal of the foundation is not to make a UFC fighter. It's to help kids believe in their dream, to have a dream, to have a purpose in life.

If we value human rights, they should be at the core of the project against violent extremism, and women a key part of our imagined future.

Winning is good but is better when it becomes a means of hope and positive change in the lives of those who are deprived.

I am so honored to be working with A Place Called Home as their ambassador to bring awareness to the incredible services and programs which benefits kids in the Los Angeles community.

I know I got to do something that's one in a million, to escape a refugee camp, to come to this country and have so many doors open for me. So I want to go back and make a difference and give motivation or hope to all the kids that never got to leave or have the privilege that I did.

A lot of great things are going on. In many ways, the past 30 years have been the best in world history. But we can do much better. I prefer the word hope over optimism.

For me, I see myself as a role model because, everything I do, there is a person somewhere who needs to hear me spread a message of non-violent conflict resolution.

Children International is bringing a lot of hope to families who start out with nothing. They have nothing. Then Children International comes in, puts them in school, gets them what they need.

If Marilyn Manson would write a song that says, 'Do your damn homework,' it would make the world a better place, and it wouldn't hurt him at all. And if he doesn't like it, to hell with him. He can come fight us - by the bicycle racks.

I think that my parents wanted my brother and I to do what they couldn't have done and live a free life and not worry about war.