Thomas Friedman Global Quotations

Lord knows there's a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society - in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage.

Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They're playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They're just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain. That's what we're up against in Iraq. We're up against a suicide supply chain.

I think it's going to be one of the biggest middle-class jobs -- collaborators. Collaborators are people who are good at working as part of global knowledge, manufacturing or supply chains.

When the world is flat, all these global institutions are really exposed to any kind of global or Internet campaign that affects their image or brand.

In this era of mounting complexity with more people, systems and products entwined in a bewildering web of global networks, explaining is an enormously valuable skill.

We have to be the best global citizens we can be.