Quotes By Thomas Friedman

I attended public school with the same group of kids from K through 12.

We say that necessity is the mother of invention, and no country has more of a necessity to develop clean power than China.

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.

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.

Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.

McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15.

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.

If you followed this economic crisis and you do not think that the world is getting flatter, you are not paying attention. We saw the entire global economy at one time acting totally in sync. The real truth is the world is even flatter than I thought. Our mortgage crisis is killing Deutsche Bank. You still don't think the world is flat?

The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention argues that no two countries that are both part of the same global supply chain will ever fight a war as long as they are each part of that supply chain.

No matter where I go - London, Beirut, Jerusalem, Washington, Beijing, or Bangalore - I'm always looking to rediscover that land of ten thousand lakes where politics actually worked to make people's lives better, not pull them apart.

I love America. I think it's the best country in the world. But I also think we're not tending to our sauce.

I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and another who is in the 11th grade of high school.

I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.

I'm from Minnesota. I'm optimistic. I mean, that's just who I am.

You take one bomber and deploy him in Baghdad, and another is manufactured in Riyadh the next day. It's exactly like when you take the toy off the shelf at Wal-Mart and another is made in Shen Zhen the next day.

If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.

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.

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.

I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.

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.

We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that.

Presidents grow up in the White House. The times shape the man.

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.

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.

I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before.

There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.

Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards.

You'll know the green revolution has been won when the word 'green' disappears.

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.