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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century QUOTES

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " 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

3 " 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

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

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

5 " 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

6 " 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

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

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

8 " 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

9 " 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

10 " 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

11 " 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

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

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

13 " Virulence is the sound of a self-selecting community talking to itself and positively reinforcing itself with no obligation to answer to anyone or look anyone in the eye. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

18 " I once heard Jerry Yang, the cofounder of Yahoo!, quote a senior Chinese government official as saying, "Where people have hope, you have a middle class." I think this is a very useful insight. The existence of large, stable middle classes around the world is crucial to geopolitical stability, but middle class is a state of mind, not a state of income. That's why a majority of Americans always describe themselves as "middle class," even though by income statistics some of them wouldn't be considered as such. "Middle class" is another way of describing people who believe that they have a pathway out of poverty or lower-income status toward a higher standard of living and a better future for their kids. "

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

19 " 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. "

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

20 " 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.
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― Thomas L. Friedman , The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century