Thomas Friedman Quotes

As the current U.S.-Israel assault raged, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel's tactics in the current attack, as in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are based on the sound principle of "trying to 'educate' Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians - the families and employers of the militants - to restrain Hezbollah in the future."10 And by similar logic, bin Laden's effort to "educate" Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin's destruction of Grozny, and other notable educational exercises. ~ Noam Chomsky

Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or soon, even language. ~ Thomas Friedman

Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water. ~ Thomas Friedman

I would say that in 2000, we understand as much about how today's system of globalization is going to work as we understood about how the Cold War system was going to work in 1946. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

Lord knows there's a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

American young people have got to understand from an early age that the world pays off on results, not on effort. Not everyone should win a prize no matter where he or she finishes. ~ Thomas Friedman

I've been a critic of the antiglobalization movement, and they've been a critic of me, but the one thing I respect about the movement is their authentic energy. These are not people who don't care about the world. ~ Thomas Friedman

If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you're not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say "it is a 401(k) world." Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it. ~ Thomas Friedman

We've gone from thinking the fuels that powered our growth were inexpensive, inexhaustible and benign to understanding they are exhaustible, expensive and toxic. Once you frame the problem that way, people will look at solutions differently. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

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

If you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it might visit you. ~ Thomas Friedman

Benjamin Netanyahu understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. ~ Thomas Friedman

When it comes to dealing with the world's climate and energy challenges, I have a simple rule: change America, change the world. ~ Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman, in his best-selling book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, declared that what happened in Asia wasn't a crisis at all. "I believe globalization did us all a favor by melting down the economies of Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Brazil in the 1990s, because it laid bare a lot of rotten practices and institutions, ~ Naomi Klein

Tom Friedman says China is so awesome they make kosher pigs. ~ Jonah Goldberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They're playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They're just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain. That's what we're up against in Iraq. We're up against a suicide supply chain. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

We have to be the best global citizens we can be. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

I love America. I think it's the best country in the world. But I also think we're not tending to our sauce. ~ Thomas Friedman

A 2011 report produced by Forrester Research estimated that the revenue generated through the sales of smartphone and tablet applications will reach $38 billion annually by 2015. Think about that: An industry that did not exist in 2006 will be generating $38 billion in revenues within a decade ... ~ Thomas Friedman

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

Hope and optimism aren't just attitudes, they are life strategies. ~ Thomas Friedman

No matter where I go - London, Beirut, Jerusalem, Washington, Beijing, or Bangalore - I'm always looking to rediscover that land of ten thousand lakes where politics actually worked to make people's lives better, not pull them apart. ~ Thomas Friedman

I attended public school with the same group of kids from K through 12. ~ Thomas Friedman

We're going in the wrong direction and I think the only way to counter that is to bring the story home in really concrete ways to people - in ways that kids can understand and non-scientists can understand. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

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

Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal. ~ Thomas Friedman

Being really good at 'learning how to learn,' as President Bill Brody of Johns Hopkins put it, will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones phased out faster than ever. ~ Thomas Friedman

Your boss doesn't care what you know, because the Google machine knows everything. Your boss cares about what you can do with what you know. That's the only thing your boss will pay for. ~ Thomas Friedman

Many authors hate to go on grinding book tours. But I've always found it a useful way to be a foreign correspondent in America and take the pulse of the country. ~ Thomas Friedman

I'm from Minnesota. I'm optimistic. I mean, that's just who I am. ~ Thomas Friedman

It is depressing but not shocking to witness the liberal intelligentsia embrace Ari Shavit so enthusiastically. Shavit is someone who is as consistently wrong as Thomas Friedman on major issues, and at least as much a courtier of power. ~ Max Blumenthal

The merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution means new products are being phased in and out so fast that companies cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to figure out whether a team leader is doing a good job. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

There's no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student's achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here's what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children's education can also make a huge difference in a student's achievement. ~ Thomas Friedman

It created a global platform that allowed more people to plug and play, collaborate and compete, share knowledge and share work, than anything we have ever seen in the history of the world. ~ Thomas Friedman

Capitalism and political systems - like companies - must constantly evolve to stay vital. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

Netscape brought the Internet alive with the browser. They made the Internet so that Grandma could use it, and her grandchildren could use it. The second thing that Netscape did was commercialize a set of open transmission protocols so that no company could own the Net. ~ Thomas Friedman

Being one of my sources is exhausting. It's not one interview and you're done. I keep going back until I feel like I understand everything. ~ Thomas Friedman

We say that necessity is the mother of invention, and no country has more of a necessity to develop clean power than China. ~ Thomas Friedman

I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before. ~ Thomas Friedman

Nature is regulating our climate for free. Mother Nature, she's been doing that for free, for a long, long time. Now do you really want to get in there and do geo-engineering and all this kind of stuff? ~ Thomas Friedman

When I wrote 'The World Is Flat,' I said the world is flat. Yeah, we're all connected. Facebook didn't exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo. ~ Thomas Friedman

There is something more severe than the problem with Thomas Friedman, which can be generalized to represent someone causing action while being completely unaccountable for his words. ~ Thomas Friedman

A vision without resources is an hallucination. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

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

Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country. ~ Thomas Friedman

I basically did all the library research for this book on Google, and it not only saved me enormous amounts of time but actually gave me a much richer offering of research in a shorter time. ~ Thomas Friedman

Guantanamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

Two things are going on at the same time with the flattening of the world: The relentless quest for efficiency is squeezing some of the fat out of life. ~ Thomas Friedman

Presidents grow up in the White House. The times shape the man. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've always enjoyed the communal side of Jewish life. ~ Thomas Friedman

Many jobs at Google require math, computing, and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

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

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this: Can this person add value every hour, every day - more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer? Can he or she help my company adapt by not only doing the job today but also reinventing the job for tomorrow? ~ Thomas Friedman

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

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

I can see a day soon where you'll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world - some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh - paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. ~ Thomas Friedman

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society - in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism. ~ Thomas Friedman

What we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues. ~ Thomas Friedman

Crocker, it's about property values."
"It's about being in place. We -" gesturing around the Visitor's Bar and its withdrawal into seemingly unbounded shadow, "we're in place. We've been in place forever. Look around. Real estate, water rights, oil, cheap labor - all of that's ours. And you, at the end of the day, what are you? one more unit in this swarm of transients who come and go without pause here in the sunny Southland, eager to be bought off with a car of a certain make, model, and year, a blonde in a bikini, thirty seconds on some excuse for a wave - a chili dog, for Christ's sake." He shrugged. "We will never run out of you people. The supply is inexhaustible. ~ Thomas Pynchon

You see how many whips and things there are here. Our horses are very, very naughty. ~ Thomas Pynchon

What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity? For verily it is not deep words that make a man holy and upright; ~ Thomas A Kempis

Statistics do not speak for themselves. ~ Milton Friedman

Can't say it often enough - change your hair, change your life. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly has been disturbed over what he sees as the erosion of presidential powers since the Watergate scandal and has urged Bush to take a stronger stand against what Cheney sees as congressional intrusions into the executive branch. ~ Helen Thomas

Be patient, my soul: thou hath suffered worse than this. ~ Thomas Holcroft

Man cannot live without joy. That is why one deprived of spiritual joys goes over to carnal pleasures. ~ Thomas Aquinas

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing. ~ Thomas Paine

The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm. ~ Milton Friedman

I testify that each one of us can feel the Lord's inspiration as we live worthily and strive to serve Him. ~ Thomas S. Monson

When you read any great mystery, recorded in holy Writ, you are to prostrate your Reason to Divine Revelation. ~ Thomas Ken

He flat out needed Chuck, like a kid with a security blanket. ~ James Dashner

Spoken like a Protestant. ~ Thomas Harris

For many people laughing is a way of being loud without having to say a thing. ~ Thomas Pynchon

These are the days that try man's heart. ~ Thomas Paine

Learn to live small and you will discover great pleasures. You will accomplish more in your life than you could ever predict if you were overly ambitious. ~ Thomas Moore