Quotes By Thomas Friedman

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.

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?

We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.

Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.

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.

Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.

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.

Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. Wherever I go I meet innovators of wind power equipment, solar energy operators.

Sometimes, when my wife and I were going out to dinner, I would take my laptop with me and work in the car, so as to take advantage of the half hour going and coming.

What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.

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.

My mom enlisted in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and my parents actually bought our home thanks to the loan she got through the GI Bill.

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.

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?

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

A golf course should aspire to generate as much energy as it consumes - golf should be leading the way toward energy net zero.

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

The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.

There's a difference between being able to make long distance phone calls cheaper on the Internet and walking around Riyadh with a PDA where you can have all of Google in your pocket. It's a difference in degree that's so enormous it becomes a difference in kind.

Basically all the world's computer parts come from the same supply chain that runs from Korea, down through coastal China, over to Taiwan, and down to Malaysia.