A biography for Thomas Friedmanhasn’t been written yet.
“We need better neighbors, neighbors that care about the schools in their neighborhood whether they have kids in them or not, because they know that the health and vitality of that neighborhood depends on it.”
“No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.”
“Lord knows there's a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education.”
“Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or soon, even language.”
“I've been a critic of the antiglobalization movement, and they've been a critic of me, but the one thing I respect about the movement is their authentic energy. These are not people who don't care about the world.”
“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.”
“Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal.”
“By 'flat' I did not mean that the world is getting equal. I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before. That's why an Indian in Bangalore can take care of the office work of American doctors or read the X-rays of German hospitals.”
“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.”
“We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that.”
“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.”
“I'm from Minnesota. I'm optimistic. I mean, that's just who I am.”
“There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.”
“I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt.”
“Nature is regulating our climate for free. Mother Nature, she's been doing that for free, for a long, long time. Now do you really want to get in there and do geo-engineering and all this kind of stuff?”
“Entrepreneurs don't write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they're always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn.”
“Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They're playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They're just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain. That's what we're up against in Iraq. We're up against a suicide supply chain.”
“Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards.”
“I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.”
“Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.”