Thomas L. Friedman

“When my dad died suddenly, my widowed mom couldn’t afford my college tuition, so Morrie and his friend Jake Garber, my dad’s…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“These alliances began with the most basic blood association—the family—and then expanded to the clan, the tribe, and then to other tribes.”

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Social conservatives from the right wing of the Republican party, who do not like globalization or closer integration with the world because…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“When Muslim radicals and fundamentalists look at the West, they see only the openness that makes us, in their eyes, decadent and…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Men grant and withdraw their love according to their whims, but fear is a hand that rests on their shoulders in a…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“But the question that tugged at me, and I asked over and over was: What was that “it” that was being sustained?…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“It is fun to be around really, really creative makers in the second half of the chessboard, to see what they can…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Today more than ever, the traditional boundaries between politics, culture, technology, finance, national security and ecology are disappearing. You often cannot explain…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Second, in the desert there was no outside mediator or government to enforce laws or to adjudicate disputes in a neutral way…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“NAZ was founded in 2008 in Minneapolis, and is modeled on Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone. It uses a holistic web of…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“I got to see with my own eyes the boundaries of men’s compassion alongside their unfathomable brutality, their ingenuity alongside astounding folly,…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“While their parents knew a different life and would never really feel at home again without it, their kids had never known…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“The resulting article—an almost hour-by-hour reconstruction of the massacre—was published across four full pages of The New York Times on September 26,…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“LinkedIn was barely known and most people thought it was a prison,”

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Goods are traded, but services are consumed and produced in the same place. And you cannot export a haircut. But we are…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“The fact is, parents and schools and cultures can and do shape people. The most important influence in my life, outside of…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Because Beirut was never just a city. It was an idea—an idea that meant something not only to the Lebanese but to…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Some of our bonding moments were times of great tragedy, but there were many happy memories as well. Though we each have…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“We also recognized that schools can’t do it alone, so we surround students with a team that provides everything from extra academic…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“The first and oldest of these traditions is tribe-like politics. I use the term “tribe-like” to refer to a pre-modern form of…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“As the Lebanese sociologist Samir Khalaf summed it up: “Though the average Lebanese derives much … social support and psychological reinforcement from…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“Beirut’s enduring lesson for me was how thin is the veneer of civilization, how easily the ties that bind can unravel, how…

— Thomas L. Friedman

“My time in the Middle East led me to realize that, with a few rare exceptions, the dominant political ideology there—whether you…

— Thomas L. Friedman