Thomas friedman quotes

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.

There is definitely global warming, and man is definitely contributing to it. Go out to, say, Montana and talk to some pretty conservative people, hunters and fishermen. They know that in the trout stream they fished when they were growing up, the trout are stressed because the water temperature is going up. They know the hunting season has been delayed because the snows are coming later, and therefore the elk aren't coming down from the mountains.

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

The unemployment rate today for people with our-year college degrees is 4.1%, which is almost none. That's people switching jobs basically. That tells you that education is the only way up and the only way out. If that is the fact, then we've got to get more of it for more people.

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.

In the hyperconnected world, there is only “good” “better” and “best.

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

What we do know is that the planet is going from 7 billion people today to 9 billion. More people want to live like us, drive American- size cars, live in an American-size home, and eat American-size Big Macs. What does that mean? It means that energy demand is going to be going up.

I don't know what the average income of Muslim-Americans is, but Muslim-American immigrants of recent vintage, I bet they have a very above-average representation in professional and business occupations.

Most jobs are outsourced to the past, they aren't outsourced to India or Mexico or Pakistan or anywhere else.

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

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. And this is in a world where we know that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are toxic, and water is more and more scarce. Golf could do a lot more.

Combating climate change requires government policy, and most conservatives hate the idea of more government regulation. Because they hate the prescription, they deny the diagnosis.

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

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

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!'.

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

In a hyper-connected world where average is over, there is one thing we know absolutely for sure: Every good job will require more education.

The thing you have to remember is, oil and gas are commodities, and the more we use them the more the price goes up, like any commodity. Solar, wind - they are technologies, so the more you use them, the more the price goes down.

We have to be the best global citizens we can be.

What is the most entrepreneurial country in the Middle East today? It's Lebanon. Which country has no oil or gas? Lebanon. The same was true of Israel, the same was of Bahrain. You could see a real gradation. Turkey, for instance: no oil and gas, very entrepreneurial. You can either dig your future out of the ground or you can unlock the potential of your people.

If you want to get an advance machine tool job today, you need to know calculus. We know a lot of people don't, we can't expect everyone to know calculus, what do we do? We created a huge bubble that created a huge number of jobs to build houses and to be in retail. You don't have to have a lot of skills to work in the new Gap store that opened, at the latest Starbucks branch, or to hammer a nail for a new house.

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.

Desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world

It is hard to partner with someone when you become so radioactive no one wants to stand next to you.

Our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of taxpayers' money into the mail-order catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay.

So what am I? I guess I would call myself a sober optimist...If you are not sober about the scale of the challenge, then you are not paying attention. But if you are not an optimist, you have no chance of generating the kind of mass movement needed to achieve the needed scale.

No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer.

Many of us who grew up playing golf know that our kids aren't doing it. A great way to enhance the game, make it cool again and bring back some of the interest among younger people is to make golf the greenest sport in an environmental sense. Every course's greenkeeper should think of himself or herself as the greenkeeper: responsible for preserving the green, not just the greens.

Remember, the difference between the world frozen over, in an ice ball, and the warming period we're in now is just 6 degrees centigrade. A change of just 1 degree can have a huge effect.

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

Oil is a tangible commodity, so there is a global market. The fact that we may need less may affect the global price because we're big consumers: we probably take about a quarter of global demand. But if suddenly, let's just use a crazy example, fighting in the Middle East led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and no oil could get out through the Strait of Hormuz, well that would affect China, India, Europe, it will affect the whole global economy. It will affect us, too, then.

In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears-and that is our problem.

By 'flat' I did not mean that the world is getting equal. I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before. That's why an Indian in Bangalore can take care of the office work of American doctors or read the X-rays of German hospitals.

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.

I am always a little skeptical on the water thing because I have been hearing that for 30 years, but one year it's going to be true. With the rising populations, Yemen could be the first country in the world, or Sana'a the first major city in the world, to run out of water, that's from Yemeni hydrological engineers and the United Nations. Sooner or later, all of these people, from 7 to 9 billion, all of them want to live like America, will be consuming so much more water that some of the societies will hit a wall without more sustainable environmental practices.

America needs rebooting.

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.

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

McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.

Everything I’ve ever gotten in life is largely due to the fact that I was born in this country, America, at this time with these opportunities for its citizens. It is the primary obligation of our generation to turn over a similar America to our kids.

Why is it Muslims from Pakistan or from Egypt come to America and thrive, and they are frustrated back home? It's about clean government. It's about a rule of law. It's about intellectual property protection. They've got all the talent and energy of anybody else. As new immigrants they may have more of it, so you put them in our system and they become doctors, lawyers, and businessmen and entrepreneurs.

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.'

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

America was the funder of petro-dictatorships. We treated all these countries as basically big, large gas stations: Libya station, Iraq station, Iran station, Egypt station, Syria station, and all we asked of them were three things: Keep your palms open, your prices low and don't bother Israel too much, and you can do whatever you want to your own people.

A generation ago [the Democratic Party] stood for progressive change. Now they defend every federal program as if each were sacred. They have become the most conservative force in American politics.

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.

America is interested in change and reform in the Middle East but in a stable way.

I don't think the Arab Spring had much to do with energy. I think it was just the opposite, in fact. I think the Arab Spring happened because particularly young people knew they were living in a context where they could not realize their full potential, that they are being kept down by their own governments.

If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.

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

I've always believed the world would be a better place if more people everywhere have a chance to shape their own future and realize their full potential. I think that is what life is about.

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.

Our kids are going to be so angry with us one day. We've charged their future on our Visa cards.

Almost all the students who make it to Caltech, one of the best scientific universities in the world, come from public schools. So it can be done.

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.

Capitalism makes people unequally rich. Communism makes people equally poor.

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

I don't think we replaced the Soviet Union with Al Qaida. I think we replaced, we should have, Soviet Union with the merger of globalization and the IT revolution. I think it's that. That is the real challenge that we face today. Unlike the Soviet Union, it has no face, it has no missiles, but it is something that challenges every job, every city and every community.

To me the smart thing that governments in the Middle East would be doing right now is taking their oil and gas fountain - and the smartest ones are to some degree - and making sure they're investing in their people to unlock their potential - men and women.

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

The Middle East would always be an important trading partner in just a market sense, like America is a big market for us, Asia is a big market, Europe is a big market. You are going to have hundreds of millions of consumers there, from just a standard market point of view, from a very narrow American point of view.

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

The reason that we are becoming less equal is because of the greater requirements, secure requirements, for a good job. This goes back to the '80s basically, this started changing as globalization and the IT revolution merged, and each started to drive the other.

Some would ask which country am I from? We are supposed to tell the truth, [so] we tell them India. Some thought it was Indiana, not India! Some did not know where India is. I said it is the country next to Pakistan.

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.

The great thing about cheap natural gas, again it's cheap, and it provides a cleaner alternative to coal. But it's still a fossil fuel, and because it's still a fossil fuel, it still emits carbon.

Today, natural gas now outstrips coal as the leading provider of electricity in America. If this is as big as people believe it is, natural gas will soon be powering trucks and marine ships. Maybe even standard commercial cars that people use at home through compressed natural gas, other gas to liquids. The potential is there for more energy independence by America and a reliance on cleaner fuel - natural gas emits half as much as coal, in terms of carbon emissions. That's a real bounty.

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.

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.

Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best: "Your son is sick. Ninety-eight doctors give you one diagnosis, two doctors give you another. Who are you going to go with?" Well, why would it be the conservative position to go with the two? That's not conservative, that's crazy.

I'm pretty much an open book. I am a fanatic golfer and golf nut. If I have three free hours any day, my first choice is to run to the golf course if the weather is nice.

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

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

Everyone needs to get together and say: "Our objective is to preserve and enhance the game and the planet on which it's played. To make golf a leader in greening the world."

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.

The country that owns green, that dominates that industry, is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, competitive companies, healthy population and, most of all, global respect.

The only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed.

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

The Arab awakening was like watching elephants fly: something you didn't expect, something you haven't seen before, "Wow, elephants fly."

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Change your leaders, not your light bulbs.

Our president's latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.

All one needs to do is just to go to any hospital in America and see the number of Pakistani or Indian or Lebanese, or Syrian, or Egyptian doctors, who are either first generation or themselves immigrants, to know, and I'm a big believer - brains are distributed evenly around the world. What aren't distributed evenly are opportunities, stable government, educational institutions, etc.

Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately needed

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I don't think that stability and the status quo go together at all, not in a flat world where people are integrated, where women are assuming new roles, where young people want to be consulted and participate. I think the trick is to open up, move down the path of reform, do it in a way that is consistent with your own society's stability and culture, and just don't think you can do nothing.

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

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.

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.

You always have to remember that Mother Nature is a lot like your body. If your temperature goes from 98.6 to 100.6, you don't feel so good. If it goes from 100.6 to 102.6, well, you call the doctor. If it goes from 102.6 to 104.6, you're in the emergency room at a hospital. The same with Mother Nature - small changes in global average temperatures have a huge climate effect.

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

Until we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young men....And the best place to start is with a carbon tax.

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

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

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.

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

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

C'mon kids! Wake up and smell the CO2! Take over your administration building, occupy your university president's office, or storm in on the next meeting of your college's board of trustees until they agree to make your school carbon neutral.

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.

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

What if we're wrong and there is no climate change? Well, by doing everything possible to address it, we will still use less water, stimulate new energy savings and, in time, money-saving technologies, enjoy cleaner air, and preserve more forests and trees and animals.

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.

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.

What I want is natural gas to be a bridge to a cleaner energy future, not a dam against a cleaner energy future, not a dead end. To get this right, to get the most out of it, we not only have to make sure we exploit natural gas in a clean way - it's a challenge - but we also have to make sure that we are instilling and implementing all the incentives to win solar, nuclear energy efficiency that will make them continually competitive with natural gas in the future.

I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.

Guantanamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.

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.

Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.

Scientists tend to focus on what they don't know more than what they do know. And there are a lot of things we still don't know about the climate. But we know the difference between climate variability and climate change, and right now the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is well outside the variability pattern - and that's quite quantifiable.

A vision without resources is an hallucination.

I don't think a monarchy led by 75- and 80-year-old men [Saudi Arabia] in today's modern world is really sustainable.

I think that competition will exist even if we discover more oil. We're never going to know how much we have, or how long will it last. You are always going to want to have diversity of supply. I think the Middle East will remain a region of competition, of global competition, fighting for a long time.

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.

I'm a radical pro-immigration advocate. I'm not saying we just look at the Muslim world or we just look at China, we just look at India as a source of our talent. But, one thing we know... first or second generation or new immigrants or children of immigrants have started about 40% of the Fortune 500 companies. For me it's always been a really very important issue that I want America to be open to the most energetic and talented people from around the world.

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