Thomas Friedman famous quotes

What every employer is looking for is not someone who can do the job, but someone who can reinvent the job.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Jobs #Employers

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Party #Israel #East

No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's
-- Thomas Friedman

#Country #War #Two

When I was growing up, my parents told me, 'Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.' I tell my daughters, 'Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.'
-- Thomas Friedman

#Education #Daughter #Mother

In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Children #Important #May

Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Change #Optimistic #Pessimist

I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Valleys #World #India

Tap into people's dignity and they will do anything for you. Ignore it, and they won't lift a finger.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Wisdom #People #Dignity

What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Religious #Political #Movement

Sometimes, when my wife and I were going out to dinner, I would take my laptop with me and work in the car, so as to take advantage of the half hour going and coming.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Wife #Car #Going Out

Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Ecosystems #Innovation #Fuel

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Thinking #Issues #Say Anything

At the end of the day, no amount of investing, no amount of clean electrons, no amount of energy efficiency will save the natural world if we are not paying attention to it - if we are not paying attention to all the things that nature give us for free: clean air, clean water, breathtaking vistas, mountains for skiing, rivers for fishing, oceans for sailing, sunsets for poets, and landscapes for painters. What good is it to have wind-powered lights to brighten the night if you can't see anything green during the day? Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Ocean #Sunset #Mean

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Marine #Army #Technology

The ideal country in a flat world is the one with no natural resources, because countries with no natural resources tend to dig inside themselves. They try to tap the energy, entrepreneurship, creativity, and intelligence of their own people-men and women-rather than drill an oil well.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Country #Creativity #Men

The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention argues that no two countries that are both part of the same global supply chain will ever fight a war as long as they are each part of that supply chain.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Country #War #Fighting

If you followed this economic crisis and you do not think that the world is getting flatter, you are not paying attention. We saw the entire global economy at one time acting totally in sync. The real truth is the world is even flatter than I thought. Our mortgage crisis is killing Deutsche Bank. You still don't think the world is flat?
-- Thomas Friedman

#Real #Thinking #Acting

America needs rebooting.
-- Thomas Friedman

#America #Needs

A golf course should aspire to generate as much energy as it consumes - golf should be leading the way toward energy net zero.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Zero #Golf #Way

Every golf course should have its carbon rating on the scorecard, alongside its Course Rating, Slope, par and yardage.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Golf #Carbon #Rating

Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Stars #Rocks #Keys

Desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world
-- Thomas Friedman

#Interesting #World #Desktop

I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Believe #Safety #People

In Globalization 1.0, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2.0, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3.0, in which the world went from being small to tiny.
-- Thomas Friedman

#World #Eras #Tiny

The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors. They all need to go on safari together.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Together #Needs #Safari

In the hyperconnected world, there is only “good” “better” and “best,
-- Thomas Friedman

#World

Saudi hijackers first came into contact with al-Qaeda and went through Terrorism 101 when they signed up for the jihad in Afghanistan.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Als #Firsts #Terrorism

When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant: a major sports colosseum at the heart of their capital. Our fate can be different; but only if we start doing things differently.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Sports #Heart #Fate

Remember, in China when you are one in a million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.
-- Thomas Friedman

#People #Remember #Like You

Never before in the history of the planet have so many people, on their own, had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.
-- Thomas Friedman

#People #Information #Planets

Communism was a great system for making people equally poor - in fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. Capitalism made people unequally rich.
-- Thomas Friedman

#People #World #Facts

It has always been my view that terrorism is not spawned by the poverty of money; it is spawned by the poverty of dignity. Humiliation is the most underestimated force in international relations and in human relations. It is when people or nations are humiliated that they really lash out and engage in extreme violence.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Views #People #Poverty

You win the presidency by connecting with the American people's gut insecurities and aspirations. You win with a concept.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Winning #People #Insecurity

We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Independent #Energy #Needs

Something really big happened in the world's wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I'm always struck that Facebook , Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Change #Iphone #Data

If we don't have a more serious energy policy, the difference between a good day and bad day for America from here on will hinge on how the 86-year-old king of Saudi Arabia manages...change.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Kings #Good Day #Bad Day

Iraq may still have a decent outcome...but even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Iraq #May #Outcomes

If e-mail had been around before the telephone was invented, people would have said, 'Hey, forget e-mail! With this new telephone invention I can actually talk to people!'.
-- Thomas Friedman

#People #Hey #Mail

We've given Iraq six months and I don't think things are really working out, so we should probably bring our troops home.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Home #Thinking #Iraq

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you five, that is a mistake. But if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you ninety-seven, that is no longer a mistake. The man you are talking to is operating with a wholly different logic from your own.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Mistake #Men #Talking

The first rule of holes is when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Three #Firsts #Digging

The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. [...] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Political #Gold #Defining

Only if you give the Palestinians something to lose is there a hope that they will agree to moderate their demands.... I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Believe #Giving #Demand

Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Mean #Environment #Share

I have no problem with a war for oil-if we accompany it with a real program for energy conservation. But when we tell the world we couldn't care less about climate change, that we feel entitled to drive whatever big cars we feel like, that we feel entitled to consume however much oil we like, the message we send is that a war for oil in the gulf is not a war to protect the world's right to economic survival-but our right to indulge. Now that will be seen as immoral.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Real #War #Oil

The financial crisis just made the hole deeper, which is why our stimulus needs to be both big and smart, both financially and educationally stimulating. It needs to be able to produce not only more shovel-ready jobs and shovel-ready workers, but more Google-ready jobs and Windows-ready and knowledge-ready workers.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Jobs #Smart #Math

Supply chains cannot tolerate even 24 hours of disruption. So if you lose your place in the supply chain because of wild behavior you could lose a lot. It would be like pouring cement down one of your oil wells.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Oil #Ties #Pouring

I am hoping, though, that many of them have kids, who, when they have a moment to take a break from their iPods, Internet, or Google, will explain to their parents running the country just how the world is being flattened.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Country #Running #Kids

Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Home #Behavior #Geopolitics

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Party #America #People

What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Believe #Abortion #Birth

We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Fighting #Terrorist

Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Done #Positive Change #Optimist

You take one bomber and deploy him in Baghdad, and another is manufactured in Riyadh the next day. It's exactly like when you take the toy off the shelf at Wal-Mart and another is made in Shen Zhen the next day.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Bombers #Next #Toys

There's a difference between being able to make long distance phone calls cheaper on the Internet and walking around Riyadh with a PDA where you can have all of Google in your pocket. It's a difference in degree that's so enormous it becomes a difference in kind.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Distance #Phones #Differences

You'll know the green revolution has been won when the word 'green' disappears.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Revolution #Green #Disappear

We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Technology #Feet #Balance

There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Faces #Research #Substitutes

My mom enlisted in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and my parents actually bought our home thanks to the loan she got through the GI Bill.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Mom #War #Home

McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Mcdonalds #Designer

Basically all the world's computer parts come from the same supply chain that runs from Korea, down through coastal China, over to Taiwan, and down to Malaysia.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Running #Korea #Ties

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Hands #Fists

Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. Wherever I go I meet innovators of wind power equipment, solar energy operators.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Stars #Rocks #Wind

No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Political #World #World Is Flat

If you don't visit the bad neighborhoods, the bad neighborhoods are going to visit you.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Life #Success #Neighborhood

I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and another who is in the 11th grade of high school.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Mother #Daughter #School

I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt.
-- Thomas Friedman

#Believe #Years #Egypt