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Thomas L. Friedman QUOTES

Thomas L. Friedman QUOTES

1 " Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

2 " In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children...The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. 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 L. Friedman

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

― Thomas L. Friedman

4 " America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products. "

― Thomas L. Friedman

5 " When Muslim radicals and fundamentalists look at the West, they see only the openness that makes us, in their eyes, decadent and promiscuous. They see only the openness that has produced Britney Spears and Janet Jackson. They do not see, and do not want to see, the openness - the freedom of thought and inquiry - that has made us powerful, the openness that has produced Bill Gates and Sally Ride. They deliberately define it all as decadence. Because if openness, women's empowerment, and freedom of thought and inquiry are the real sources of the West's economic strength, then the Arab-Muslim world would have to change. And the fundamentalists and extremists do not want to change. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

6 " The fall of the Berlin Wall on 11/9/89 unleashed forces that ultimately liberated all the captive peoples of the Soviet Empire "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

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

― Thomas L. Friedman

8 " People will change their habits quickly IF they have a strong reason for doing so. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

9 " Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

10 " It is so easy to demonize free-market and the freedom to outsource and offshore because it is so much easier to see people being laid off in big bunches, which makes headlines, than to see them being hired in fives and tens by small and medium-sized companies, which rarely makes news. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

11 " How youMore people will learn about IBM from Wikipedia in the coming years than from IBM itself. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

12 " Culture is nested in context, not genes. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

13 " Development is a voluntary process. You need a positive decision to make the right steps, but it starts with introspection. "

― Thomas L. Friedman

14 " It is always dangerous to declare a turning point in history. We always tend to feel that, when we are alive, something really major is happening. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

15 " 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 L. Friedman

16 " One of the newest figures to emerge on the world stage in recent years is the social entrepreneur. This is usually someone who burns with desire to make a positive social impact on the world, but believes that the best way of doing it is, as the saying goes, not by giving poor people a fish and feeding them for a day, but by teaching them to fish, in hopes of feeding them for a lifetime. I have come to know several social entrepreneurs in recent years, and most combine a business school brain with a social worker's heart. The triple convergence and the flattening of the world have been a godsend for them. Those who get it and are adapting to it have begun launching some very innovative projects. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

17 " Goods are traded, but services are consumed and produced in the same place. And you cannot export a haircut. But we are coming close to exporting a haircut, the appointment part. What kind of haircut do you want? Which barber do you want? All those things can and will be done by a call center far away. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

18 " A Nobel Prize winner was asked how he became a scientist. He said that every day after school, his mother would ask him not what he learned but whether he asked a good question today. That, he said, was how he became a scientist. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

19 " 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 L. Friedman , Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America

20 " No low-trust society will ever produce sustained innovation. "

― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century