This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
I'm actually not against drilling. What I'm against is making that the center of our focus because we are on the eve of a new revolution, the energy technology revolution. It would be, Tom, as if on the eve of the IT revolution, the revolution of PCs and the internet, someone was up there standing and demanding, "IBM Selectric typewriters, IBM Selectric typewriters." That's what "drill, drill, drill" is the equivalent of today.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
The job of government and politicians in such a flattening world is more important than ever. It is to embrace globalization and understand that a fairer, more compassionate, and more egalitarian society lies in a web of policies aimed not at strengthening the old welfare state–or in abolishing it and just letting the market rip–but at reconfiguring it to give more Americans the outlook, education, skills, and safety nets they will need to compete against other individuals in the flat world. That is what compassionate flatism stands for, and it is built around five section areas: leadership, muscle, cushioning, social activism, and parenting.
Intelligence | World |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid.
World |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
When we were young kids growing up in America, we were told to eat our Vegetables at dinner and not leave them. Mothers said, think of the starving children in India and finish the dinner. And now I tell my children: Finish your homework. Think of the children in India Who would make you starve, if you don't.'?
Freedom of thought | Freedom | Inquiry | Openness | Thought | World | Thought |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
I think [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie. I think that, looking back, I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about... We needed to go over there basically, and take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble… And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: which part of this sentence do you understand?
Better | Existence | Future | Government | Majority | People | Poverty | Statistics | World | Government | Think |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
You can be a rich person alone. You can be a smart person alone. But you cannot be a complete person alone. For that you must be part of, and rooted in, an olive grove. This truth was once beautifully conveyed by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in his interpretation of a scene from Gabriel García Márquez’s classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude: Márquez tells of a village where people were afflicted with a strange plague of forgetfulness, a kind of contagious amnesia. Starting with the oldest inhabitants and working its way through the population, the plague causes people to forget the names of even the most common everyday objects. One young man, still unaffected, tries to limit the damage by putting labels on everything. This is a table, This is a window, This is a cow; it has to be milked every morning. And at the entrance to the town, on the main road, he puts up two large signs. One reads the name of our village is Macondo, and the larger one reads God exists. The message I get from that story is that we can, and probably will, forget most of what we have learned in life—the math, the history, the chemical formulas, the address and phone number of the first house we lived in when we got married—and all that forgetting will do us no harm. But if we forget whom we belong to, and if we forget that there is a God, something profoundly human in us will be lost.
World |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
Surely then some distinction between the different kinds of labor, with reference to their different effects on national wealth, must be admitted to be not only useful, but necessary; and if so, the question is what this distinction should be, and where the line between the different kinds of labor should be drawn.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Some would ask what country am I from? We are supposed to tell the truth, [so] we tell them India. Some thought it was Indiana, not India! Some did not know where India is. I said the country next to Pakistan.
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
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.
Attention | Efficiency | Energy | Good | Nature | Will | World |
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
But O how slick and weasel-like is self-pride! Our learnedness creeps into our sermons with a clever quotation which adds nothing to God's glory, but a bit to our own. Our cleverness in business competition earns as much self-flattery as does the possession of the money itself. Our desire to be known and approved by others, to have heads nod approvingly about us behind our backs, and flattering murmurs which we can occasionally overhear, confirm the discernment in Alfred Adler's elevation of the superiority motive. Our status as "weighty Friends" gives us secret pleasures which we scarcely own to ourselves, yet thrive upon. Yes, even pride in our own humility is one of the devil's own tricks. But humility rests upon a holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. For wherever he turns his eyes on earth, there he sees only the sun. The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence, but only the Holy Will working impersonally through him, through others, as one objective Life and Power. But what trinkets we have sought after in life, the pursuit of what petty trifles has wasted our years as we have ministered to the enhancement of our own little selves! And what needless anguishes we have suffered because our little selves were defeated, were not flattered, were not cozened and petted! But the blinding God blots out this self and gives humility and true self-hood as wholly full of Him. For as He gives obedience so He graciously gives to us what measure of humility we will accept. Even that is not our own, but His who also gives us obedience. But the humility of the God-blinded soul endures only so long as we look steadily at the Sun. Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of the Godward-directed mind. And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble. The last depths of holy and voluntary poverty are not in financial poverty, important as that is; they are in poverty of spirit, in meekness and lowliness of soul.
Body | Evil | Joy | Man | Mystery | Nature | Need | Obedience | Oblivion | Paradox | Soul | Suffering | World |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
Not many years had elapsed after the first edition of this work, when it became known to all with whom Mr. Malthus had the opportunity of communicating on the subject, or who were acquainted with his last publications, that his opinions on the subject of value had undergone some change.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
The most enduring skill you can bring to the workplace is also one of the most important skills you always had to bring to reporting -- and that is the ability to learn how to learn.
Government | Important | Need | Society | Will | World | Society | Government | Old | Understand |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Community based software development is now a business, one that holds the potential for Microsoft as for every other company.
Better | Capitalism | People | System | World |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt.