Thomas Friedman Quotes

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.

Capitalism saved the world, and there is even a heretical theory now, moving up from the level of individuals to countries: countries that trade more and have more open economies are less likely to fight wars and less likely to have genocides.

Rosalynn said, "Jimmy, if we could only get Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat up here on this mountain for a few days, I believe they might consider how they could prevent another war between their countries." That gave me the idea, and a few weeks later, I invited both men to join me for a series of private talks. In September 1978, they both came to Camp David.

The Berlin Wall wasn't the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also fell.

In 1913 many believed that there would never again be a war in Europe. The great powers of the continent were so closely intertwined economically that the view was widespread that they could no longer afford to have military confrontations.

Clearly, the Chinese need the resources, but I don't think they want to clash with the industrial world which happens to be the market for their goods.

War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it. We have total economics as well. Everything affects everybody. The Malaysian currency shakes, and people around the world are seriously affected.

If you look at the history of technology over a couple hundred years, it's all about time compression and making the globe smaller. It's had positive effects, all the ones that we know. So we're much less likely to have the kind of terrible misunderstandings that led to World War I, for example.

The only things that matter in the world are Japan and China, Russia and Europe. Latin America doesn’t matter…. And … there’s nothing you can do about the Middle East.

It's going to be impossible in the 21st century for anyone to think about anything without a Chinese aspect.

I chose to start Schwarzman Scholars because I saw the potential for the world to become focused and unhappy with China, in large part because of the populism that was growing throughout the world.

I have learned some core lessons along the way. Among the most important, I have become a firm believer that a strong geopolitical relationship can be born out of a strong economic relationship, which often begins with trade.

We should keep on going along the path of globalization. Globalization is good... when trade stops, war comes.

We are surrounded by people with accents because America is a nation of immigrants. Beyond that, the people who made your iPhone and the shirt on your back are probably Asians, and we're really not that disconnected from each other; we have very intimate relationships with the world, whether or not we realize it.

In World War II all these countries were completely against each other, complete opposite. Now we're getting them all together, through the idea of music.

Even the alleged benefits of war, so far as more than alleged, spring from the fact that conflict of peoples at least enforces intercourse between them and thus accidentally enables them to learn from one another, and thereby to expand their horizons. Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at present gone far to break down external barriers; to bring peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible connection with one another.

If you read Herodotus, the first Greek historian 2,500 years ago, he was talking about that - about people mixing with other people. Sometimes it produces great societies. Sometimes it triggers war. But, we're not going to change that. I don't think so. We're living in nations that are state nations and countries.

I would say that in 2000, we understand as much about how today's system of globalization is going to work as we understood about how the Cold War system was going to work in 1946.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.

Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge.

Democracies don't go to war.

It was about the compelling need to make countries get along to prevent war, in contrast with the totally petty and selfish bullshit that drives the individuals who are supposedly in charge of these countries. It's hard to believe that these self-centered people have nuclear weapons that they can fire at any moment.

Stop viewing China like it's the Cold War. Start viewing them as a modern member of the industrialized world.

It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war.

But if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed be a civil war of the worst description: we should rather, through the instrumentality of the men of science soften the asperities of national hostility. Davy's remarks to Thomas Poole on accepting Napoleon's prize for the best experiment on Galvanism.