Thomas Friedman Quotes

The Internet is a global resource that does not belong to any one nation or alliance. It has contributed to amazing economic growth, collaboration, civil education, and awe-inspiring lifestyle improvements for billions of people.

You have 1 billion people using the Internet with 200 million of those now using broadband internet connections, so the Internet has become a powerful network. It can carry calls.

The smartphone revolution is under-hyped, more people have access to phones than access to running water. We've never had anything like this before since the beginning of the planet.

There is an underlying, fundamental reliance on the Internet, which continues to grow in the number of users, country penetration and both fixed and wireless broadband access.

The advent of cellphones may, in the end, be no more relevant than the ability of laptops to change our written documents into ones using cool new fonts.

In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day.

The mobile industry changed Africa.

We have never lived in a time with the opportunity to put a computer in the pocket of 5 billion people.

I believe that the Internet is the information highway. I'm religious about this. I don't think it's cable television.

The Internet is a clear example of how our lives have changed in ways we couldn't have imagined: a distributed information source, which is invisible to everyone, where you can access anything, and it's distributed throughout the whole world. Basically, communication is instantaneous.

The rise of broadband and growing ubiquity of Internet access excites me the most. The world changes a lot when, no matter where you are - in the middle of a deserted highway or in a bustling city - you can get high speed broadband access.

Even in developing markets, we're seeing the growth of digital communication is proceeding at a very rapid pace.

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

Cell phones were more popular in Cambodia and Uganda because they didn't have phones. We had phones in this country, and we were very late to the table. They're going to adopt e-books much faster than we do.

I'm one of those people that thinks the Internet is amazing, and I can't believe it exists.

People can get information - on entertainment, politics, finance - much easier than before. That will change the way people do business, the way people live.

I think up until that time a lot of focus on Internet coverage was either sort of the bits and bytes aspect of it, sort of the high-tech aspect of it, and the sociological aspect of it, which is how it was transforming culture.

Inexpensive phones and pay-as-you go services are already spreading mobile phone technology to many parts of that world that never had a wired infrastructure.

There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing.

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.

Fibre optic is becoming like electricity. If you look at how electricity spread around the globe 100 years ago, that's what's happening now.

In the space of one lifetime, the Internet has opened up opportunities that were previously inconceivable.

The Internet has become important on the world's stage.

I happen to be one of the people who believe that the Internet is a force of good, and I'm very optimistic about it.

The Internet is the dynamic engine that is driving our economy today and we must keep that open.