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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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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

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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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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
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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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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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Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.
Thomas Friedman
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We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that.
Thomas Friedman
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Obviously China is clearly taking the lead in some areas, but when it comes to the most advanced innovation, it's still America.
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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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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America needs rebooting.
Thomas Friedman
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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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There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.
Thomas Friedman
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Hope and optimism aren't just attitudes, they are life strategies.
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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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 was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
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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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
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If e-mail had been around before the telephone was invented, people would have said, 'Hey, forget e-mail! With this new telephone invention I can actually talk to people!'.
Thomas Friedman
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If we don't have a more serious energy policy, the difference between a good day and bad day for America from here on will hinge on how the 86-year-old king of Saudi Arabia manages...change.
Thomas Friedman