Words matter. These are the best Thomas Friedman Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
Presidents grow up in the White House. The times shape the man.
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.
I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and another who is in the 11th grade of high school.
Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. Wherever I go I meet innovators of wind power equipment, solar energy operators.
John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.
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.
I’ve always enjoyed the communal side of Jewish life.
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.
Every sport needs its temple, its cathedral.
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.
The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.
McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15.
There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.
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.
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.
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.
You win the presidency by connecting with the American people’s gut insecurities and aspirations. You win with a concept.
Every golf course should have its carbon rating on the scorecard, alongside its Course Rating, Slope, par and yardage.
You’ll know the green revolution has been won when the word ‘green’ disappears.
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.
I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
Entrepreneurs don’t write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they’re always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn.
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?
If the Republican Party continues to take the view that there must be no tax increases, we’re stuck. Capitalism can’t work without safety nets or fiscal prudence, and we need both in a sustainable balance.
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.
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.
There’s nothing like living a little close to the edge that gets you motivated to ensure that you get the credentials you need to succeed.
Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards.
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.
If you don’t visit the bad neighborhoods, the bad neighborhoods are going to visit you.
No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.
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.
I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt.
I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.
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.’
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.
Capitalism and political systems – like companies – must constantly evolve to stay vital.
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.
I’m from Minnesota. I’m optimistic. I mean, that’s just who I am.
I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before.
We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.
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.
If you don’t have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.
The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.
Google attracts so much talent, it can afford to look beyond traditional metrics, like G.P.A. For most young people, though, going to college and doing well is still the best way to master the tools needed for many careers.
When I think back on my favorite teachers, I don’t remember anymore much of what they taught me, but I sure remember being excited about learning it. What has stayed with me are not the facts they imparted, but the excitement about learning they inspired.
We say that necessity is the mother of invention, and no country has more of a necessity to develop clean power than China.
We need a proper balance between government spending on nursing homes and nursery schools – on the last six months of life and the first six months of life.
I attended public school with the same group of kids from K through 12.
America needs rebooting.
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.
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 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.
A golf course should aspire to generate as much energy as it consumes – golf should be leading the way toward energy net zero.
