Quote

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

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
Thinking
Revolution
Venal
World
Happen
Revolutions
People
Opportunity
Arab
Bigs
Elites
Didn
Frankly
Happens
Fairly
Problem
Shared
Think
Opportunities

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

Image
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
Image
I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
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
What every employer is looking for is not someone who can do the job, but someone who can reinvent the job.
Thomas Friedman
Image
Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
Image
What we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues.
Thomas Friedman
Image
America is interested in change and reform in the Middle East but in a stable way.
Thomas Friedman
Image
That's right-the striking thing about greenhouse gases is the diversity of sources that emit them. A herd of cattle belching can be worse than highway full of hummers.
Thomas Friedman
Image
The country that owns green, that dominates that industry, is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, competitive companies, healthy population and, most of all, global respect.
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
Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.
Thomas Friedman
Image
It created a global platform that allowed more people to plug and play, collaborate and compete, share knowledge and share work, than anything we have ever seen in the history of the world.
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
I don't know what the average income of Muslim-Americans is, but Muslim-American immigrants of recent vintage, I bet they have a very above-average representation in professional and business occupations.
Thomas Friedman
Image
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
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 Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. [...] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces.
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
McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15.
Thomas Friedman