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

More quotes by Thomas Friedman

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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.
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Two things are going on at the same time with the flattening of the world: The relentless quest for efficiency is squeezing some of the fat out of life.
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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.
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What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.
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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.
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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.
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Syria is on the back end of basically a decade-long drought. Over the last decade, farmers and herders have been ravaged in Syria forcing them to give up and move to urban areas. This has put a huge strain on urban resources, and it's surely one of the reasons for the uprising there.
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Scientists tend to focus on what they don't know more than what they do know. And there are a lot of things we still don't know about the climate. But we know the difference between climate variability and climate change, and right now the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is well outside the variability pattern - and that's quite quantifiable.
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Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.
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America is interested in change and reform in the Middle East but in a stable way.
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In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them.
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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.
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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.
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When you lose your job, the unemployment rate isn't four percent, it's 100 percent.
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Hope and optimism aren't just attitudes, they are life strategies.
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Guantanamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.
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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.
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Everything I’ve ever gotten in life is largely due to the fact that I was born in this country, America, at this time with these opportunities for its citizens. It is the primary obligation of our generation to turn over a similar America to our kids.
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What we do know is that the planet is going from 7 billion people today to 9 billion. More people want to live like us, drive American- size cars, live in an American-size home, and eat American-size Big Macs. What does that mean? It means that energy demand is going to be going up.
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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.
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