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Only if you give the Palestinians something to lose is there a hope that they will agree to moderate their demands.... I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands.

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
Demand
Seat
Lose
Palestinian
Loses
Seats
Hope
Limit
Give
Demands
Palestinians
Giving
Agree
Moderate
Something
Limits
Moderates
Believe
Soon
Bus

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Your boss doesn't care what you know, because the Google machine knows everything. Your boss cares about what you can do with what you know. That's the only thing your boss will pay for.
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McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.
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In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them.
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America is interested in change and reform in the Middle East but in a stable way.
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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.
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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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To me the smart thing that governments in the Middle East would be doing right now is taking their oil and gas fountain - and the smartest ones are to some degree - and making sure they're investing in their people to unlock their potential - men and women.
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Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.
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The Arab world had a big problem of frankly venal elites. That is why these revolutions happen, because people didn't think the opportunities were being shared fairly.
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We've gone from thinking the fuels that powered our growth were inexpensive, inexhaustible and benign to understanding they are exhaustible, expensive and toxic. Once you frame the problem that way, people will look at solutions differently.
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What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth.
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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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Guantanamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.
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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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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.
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I could see America playing a slightly smaller role in the Middle East but I would not see us abandoning the region and just say Oh, like I said, China, Russia, it's yours now. Global focus is just on our hemisphere. I don't see that happening.
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When you lose your job, the unemployment rate isn't four percent, it's 100 percent.
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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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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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America needs rebooting.
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