Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Call
Whatever
Give
Better
Grab
Giving
Lifestyle
Children
Independence
Life
Taste
People
Economic

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

Image
In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears-and that is our problem.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
Hope and optimism aren't just attitudes, they are life strategies.
Thomas Friedman
Image
Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home.
Thomas Friedman
Image
A vision without resources is an hallucination.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
Never before in the history of the planet have so many people, on their own, had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.
Thomas Friedman
Image
If you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it might visit you.
Thomas Friedman
Image
You'll know the green revolution has been won when the word 'green' disappears.
Thomas Friedman
Image
I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
Thomas Friedman
Image
Change your leaders, not your light bulbs.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You take one bomber and deploy him in Baghdad, and another is manufactured in Riyadh the next day. It's exactly like when you take the toy off the shelf at Wal-Mart and another is made in Shen Zhen the next day.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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