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

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

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The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. [...] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces.
Thomas Friedman
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I don't think a monarchy led by 75- and 80-year-old men [Saudi Arabia] in today's modern world is really sustainable.
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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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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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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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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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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We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that.
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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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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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.
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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What if we're wrong and there is no climate change? Well, by doing everything possible to address it, we will still use less water, stimulate new energy savings and, in time, money-saving technologies, enjoy cleaner air, and preserve more forests and trees and animals.
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 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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Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home.
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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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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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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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