Thomas L. Friedman Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it’s a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn’t pave the world – it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water.

Every sport needs its temple, its cathedral.