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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.

Thomas Friedman

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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
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Many
Break
Flattened
World
Though
Ipods
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Google
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Explain
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There are elites that are real leaders and role models. There are elites that are really selfish and want to pull up the ladder once they've reached the roof.
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The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you five, that is a mistake. But if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you ninety-seven, that is no longer a mistake. The man you are talking to is operating with a wholly different logic from your own.
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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.
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In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears-and that is our problem.
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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.
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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.
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I don't think a monarchy led by 75- and 80-year-old men [Saudi Arabia] in today's modern world is really sustainable.
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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.
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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.
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McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.
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The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors. They all need to go on safari together.
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What every employer is looking for is not someone who can do the job, but someone who can reinvent the job.
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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.
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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.
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I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
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There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.
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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.
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Iraq may still have a decent outcome...but even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.
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Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.
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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