Quote

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

Thomas Friedman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Friedman
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: July 20
Columnist
Journalist
Screenwriter
Television Producer
Writer
Saint Louis Park
Minnesota
Thomas Loren Friedman
Thomas L. Friedman
Wisdom
Anything
People
Finger
Lift
Ignore
Lifts
Fingers
Dignity

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

Image
No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's
Thomas Friedman
Image
There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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.
Thomas Friedman
Image
There is a connection between energy, climate, food and political stability. That has played out in the Arab awakening and is not done playing out.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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.
Thomas Friedman
Image
Water is our next great environmental challenge. It is the new oil. How are we going to preserve this sport unless we are designing and maintaining golf courses that are energy net zero, carbon net zero and water net zero? Or ideally, energy positive, carbon positive and water positive, where they are taking out more than they are using.
Thomas Friedman
Image
We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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!'.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't think a monarchy led by 75- and 80-year-old men [Saudi Arabia] in today's modern world is really sustainable.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
Every golf course should have its carbon rating on the scorecard, alongside its Course Rating, Slope, par and yardage.
Thomas Friedman
Image
That's right-the striking thing about greenhouse gases is the diversity of sources that emit them. A herd of cattle belching can be worse than highway full of hummers.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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.
Thomas Friedman
Image
I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt.
Thomas Friedman