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American young people have got to understand from an early age that the world pays off on results, not on effort. Not everyone should win a prize no matter where he or she finishes.

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
World
Effort
People
Winning
Age
Finishes
American
Pays
Everyone
Prize
Understand
Early
Young
Pay
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Results

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

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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.
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 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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What we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues.
Thomas Friedman
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Iraq may still have a decent outcome...but even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.
Thomas Friedman
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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.
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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Basically all the world's computer parts come from the same supply chain that runs from Korea, down through coastal China, over to Taiwan, and down to Malaysia.
Thomas Friedman
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You'll know the green revolution has been won when the word 'green' disappears.
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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I don't think the Arab Spring had much to do with energy. I think it was just the opposite, in fact. I think the Arab Spring happened because particularly young people knew they were living in a context where they could not realize their full potential, that they are being kept down by their own governments.
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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
Thomas Friedman