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There are elites that are real leaders and role models. There are elites that are really selfish and want to pull up the ladder once they've reached the roof.

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
Leader
Roof
Real
Reached
Really
Pull
Selfish
Leaders
Models
Ladder
Role
Ladders
Roles
Elites

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

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There is a connection between energy, climate, food and political stability. That has played out in the Arab awakening and is not done playing out.
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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Everyone needs to get together and say: Our objective is to preserve and enhance the game and the planet on which it's played. To make golf a leader in greening the world.
Thomas Friedman
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The Middle East would always be an important trading partner in just a market sense, like America is a big market for us, Asia is a big market, Europe is a big market. You are going to have hundreds of millions of consumers there, from just a standard market point of view, from a very narrow American point of view.
Thomas Friedman
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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
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We've gone from thinking the fuels that powered our growth were inexpensive, inexhaustible and benign to understanding they are exhaustible, expensive and toxic. Once you frame the problem that way, people will look at solutions differently.
Thomas Friedman
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Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.
Thomas Friedman
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Tap into people's dignity and they will do anything for you. Ignore it, and they won't lift a finger.
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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We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists.
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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America is interested in change and reform in the Middle East but in a stable way.
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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Every golf course should have its carbon rating on the scorecard, alongside its Course Rating, Slope, par and yardage.
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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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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Water is our next great environmental challenge. It is the new oil. How are we going to preserve this sport unless we are designing and maintaining golf courses that are energy net zero, carbon net zero and water net zero? Or ideally, energy positive, carbon positive and water positive, where they are taking out more than they are using.
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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We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.
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