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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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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
Behavior
Unless
Cannot
Change
Geopolitics
Home
Leverage
Make
Safer
Diplomacy
Abroad

More quotes by 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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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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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
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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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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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Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or soon, even language.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
Thomas Friedman
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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
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Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best: Your son is sick. Ninety-eight doctors give you one diagnosis, two doctors give you another. Who are you going to go with? Well, why would it be the conservative position to go with the two? That's not conservative, that's crazy.
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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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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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
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In Globalization 1.0, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2.0, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3.0, in which the world went from being small to tiny.
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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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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Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.
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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Iraq today does have a chance to shape its own future. They may not do that, or this generation may not do that. But maybe the next one will, I don't know. They may try and fail, and stumble, get up and fall back.
Thomas Friedman
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Syria is on the back end of basically a decade-long drought. Over the last decade, farmers and herders have been ravaged in Syria forcing them to give up and move to urban areas. This has put a huge strain on urban resources, and it's surely one of the reasons for the uprising there.
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