Quote

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

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
Think
Happened
Potential
Thinking
Fact
Particularly
People
Living
Kept
Energy
Spring
Arab
Facts
Realize
Context
Young
Realizing
Governments
Government
Knew
Opposite
Much
Full
Opposites

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

Image
In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
You'll know the green revolution has been won when the word 'green' disappears.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
Hope and optimism aren't just attitudes, they are life strategies.
Thomas Friedman
Image
A vision without resources is an hallucination.
Thomas Friedman
Image
When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant: a major sports colosseum at the heart of their capital. Our fate can be different but only if we start doing things differently.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
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
Our kids are going to be so angry with us one day. We've charged their future on our Visa cards.
Thomas Friedman
Image
What every employer is looking for is not someone who can do the job, but someone who can reinvent the job.
Thomas Friedman
Image
We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Almost all the students who make it to Caltech, one of the best scientific universities in the world, come from public schools. So it can be done.
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