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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
Firsts
First
Shovels
Digging
Holes
Rule
Bring
Stop
Three

More quotes by 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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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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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.
Thomas Friedman
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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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No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's
Thomas Friedman
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You win the presidency by connecting with the American people's gut insecurities and aspirations. You win with a concept.
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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Everything I’ve ever gotten in life is largely due to the fact that I was born in this country, America, at this time with these opportunities for its citizens. It is the primary obligation of our generation to turn over a similar America to our kids.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
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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I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
Thomas Friedman
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Change your leaders, not your light bulbs.
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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What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.
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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When you lose your job, the unemployment rate isn't four percent, it's 100 percent.
Thomas Friedman
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Once people get a taste for whatever you want to call it - economic independence, a better lifestyle, and a better life for their children - they grab on to that and don't want to give it up.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
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