Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education who, at age 15, survived being shot in the head by a Taliban gunman on her school bus for refusing to be silenced about the right of girls to learn. She recovered in Birmingham, England, continued her advocacy, co-wrote her memoir I Am Malala, and at age 17 became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. She was born on July 12, 1997. The United Nations designated July 12 as Malala Day in 2013, when she addressed the UN Youth Assembly less than a year after the attack.

Malala's quote is disarmingly simple and completely radical. In a world where the forces that would deny girls an education have guns and bombs and governments behind them, she offers a pencil. One child. One teacher. One book. One pen. The specificity is the point — she is not speaking in abstractions. She is describing the exact, small, irreplaceable transaction of knowledge passing between one person and another, which is the foundation of every civilization that has ever existed. On the day Wimbledon crowns its champions — people who became great through years of one-on-one teaching — her words feel exactly right.