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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

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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
Digging
Holes
Rule
Bring
Stop
Three
Firsts
First
Shovels

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

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Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.
Thomas Friedman
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The great thing about cheap natural gas, again it's cheap, and it provides a cleaner alternative to coal. But it's still a fossil fuel, and because it's still a fossil fuel, it still emits carbon.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
Thomas Friedman
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If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.
Thomas Friedman
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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
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The reason that we are becoming less equal is because of the greater requirements, secure requirements, for a good job. This goes back to the '80s basically, this started changing as globalization and the IT revolution merged, and each started to drive the other.
Thomas Friedman
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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
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Supply chains cannot tolerate even 24 hours of disruption. So if you lose your place in the supply chain because of wild behavior you could lose a lot. It would be like pouring cement down one of your oil wells.
Thomas Friedman
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In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them.
Thomas Friedman
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When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant: a major sports colosseum at the heart of their capital. Our fate can be different but only if we start doing things differently.
Thomas Friedman
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Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home.
Thomas Friedman
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Combating climate change requires government policy, and most conservatives hate the idea of more government regulation. Because they hate the prescription, they deny the diagnosis.
Thomas Friedman
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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
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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.
Thomas Friedman
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Our kids are going to be so angry with us one day. We've charged their future on our Visa cards.
Thomas Friedman
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Some would ask which country am I from? We are supposed to tell the truth, [so] we tell them India. Some thought it was Indiana, not India! Some did not know where India is. I said it is the country next to Pakistan.
Thomas Friedman
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Obviously China is clearly taking the lead in some areas, but when it comes to the most advanced innovation, it's still America.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
Thomas Friedman
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Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
Thomas Friedman