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Almost All The Students Who Make It To Caltech, One Of The Best Scientific Universities In The World, Come From Public Schools. So It Can Be Done.
-Thomas Friedman
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Almost All The Students

Thomas Friedman
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Almost All The Students Who Make It To Caltech, One Of The Best Scientific Universities In The World, Come From Public Schools. So It Can Be Done.

Understanding the Quote: "almost all the students who make it to caltech, one of the..."

This quote by Thomas Friedman reflects deeply on the theme of school. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under School, World, Done, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Thomas Friedman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on school and world. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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School
World
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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.
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You Take One Bomber And Deploy Him In Baghdad, And Another Is Manufactured In Riyadh The Next Day. It's Exactly Like When You Take The Toy Off The Shelf At Wal-mart And Another Is Made In Shen Zhen The Next Day.
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I Think We Have Lost Our Groove As A Country. One Of The Reasons Was The Attack On 9/11. We Got Knocked Off Our Game. From A Country That Always Exported Hope We Went Into The Business Of Exporting Fear.
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Fuel
We Have To Fight The Terrorists As If There Were No Rules And Preserve Our Open Society As If There Were No Terrorists.
Fighting
Terrorist
Preserves
Most Jobs Are Outsourced To The Past, They Aren't Outsourced To India Or Mexico Or Pakistan Or Anywhere Else.
Jobs
Past
India
I'm A Capitalist. I Believe In Capitalism. But Capitalism Only Works If You Have Safety Nets To Deal With People Who Are Naturally Left Behind And Brutalized By It.
Believe
People
Safety
I Am Hoping, Though, That Many Of Them Have Kids, Who, When They Have A Moment To Take A Break From Their Ipods, Internet, Or Google, Will Explain To Their Parents Running The Country Just How The World Is Being Flattened.
Running
Country
Kids
I Have No Problem With A War For Oil-if We Accompany It With A Real Program For Energy Conservation. But When We Tell The World We Couldn't Care Less About Climate Change, That We Feel Entitled To Drive Whatever Big Cars We Feel Like, That We Feel Entitled To Consume However Much Oil We Like, The Message We Send Is That A War For Oil In The Gulf Is Not A War To Protect The World's Right To Economic Survival-but Our Right To Indulge. Now That Will Be Seen As Immoral.
Real
War
Oil
If You Want To Get An Advance Machine Tool Job Today, You Need To Know Calculus. We Know A Lot Of People Don't, We Can't Expect Everyone To Know Calculus, What Do We Do? We Created A Huge Bubble That Created A Huge Number Of Jobs To Build Houses And To Be In Retail. You Don't Have To Have A Lot Of Skills To Work In The New Gap Store That Opened, At The Latest Starbucks Branch, Or To Hammer A Nail For A New House.
Jobs
Skills
Numbers
The Poverty Fighters Resent The Climate-change Folks; Climate Folks Hold Summits Without Reference To Biodiversity; The Food Advocates Resist The Biodiversity Protectors. They All Need To Go On Safari Together.
Together
Needs
Safari
We Have To Be The Best Global Citizens We Can Be.
Citizens
Being The Best
Global Citizen
No, Most Of Our Political Elite Has Not Realized That The World Is Flat.
Political
World
Flats
A Vision Without Resources Is An Hallucination.
Success
Vision
Hallucinations
I Think That Competition Will Exist Even If We Discover More Oil. We're Never Going To Know How Much We Have, Or How Long Will It Last. You Are Always Going To Want To Have Diversity Of Supply. I Think The Middle East Will Remain A Region Of Competition, Of Global Competition, Fighting For A Long Time.
Fighting
Thinking
Oil
Remember, In China When You Are One In A Million, There Are 1,300 Other People Just Like You.
Funny
Humor
People
The Unemployment Rate Today For People With Our-year College Degrees Is 4.1%, Which Is Almost None. That's People Switching Jobs Basically. That Tells You That Education Is The Only Way Up And The Only Way Out. If That Is The Fact, Then We've Got To Get More Of It For More People.
Jobs
College
Years
In China Today, Bill Gates Is Britney Spears. In America Today, Britney Spears Is Britney Spears-and That Is Our Problem.
America
Bills
Today
We've Given Iraq Six Months And I Don't Think Things Are Really Working Out, So We Should Probably Bring Our Troops Home.
Home
Thinking
Iraq
It Created A Global Platform That Allowed More People To Plug And Play, Collaborate And Compete, Share Knowledge And Share Work, Than Anything We Have Ever Seen In The History Of The World.
Play
People
World
I Am Always A Little Skeptical On The Water Thing Because I Have Been Hearing That For 30 Years, But One Year It's Going To Be True. With The Rising Populations, Yemen Could Be The First Country In The World, Or Sana'a The First Major City In The World, To Run Out Of Water, That's From Yemeni Hydrological Engineers And The United Nations. Sooner Or Later, All Of These People, From 7 To 9 Billion, All Of Them Want To Live Like America, Will Be Consuming So Much More Water That Some Of The Societies Will Hit A Wall Without More Sustainable Environmental Practices.
Country
Running
Wall
Once People Get A Taste For Whatever You Want To Call It - Economic Independence, A Better Lifestyle, And A Better Life For Their Children - They Grab On To That And Don't Want To Give It Up.
Children
People
Giving
My Mother-in-law Says If You Want To Live Like A Republican, Vote Like A Democrat. That If You Are A Part Of The Group That Is Doing Well In This System, You Owe It To Yourself And To Others To Look Out For Them And Make Sure You Are Always Building A Ladder For Others To Join You.
Mother
Law
Groups
To Me The Smart Thing That Governments In The Middle East Would Be Doing Right Now Is Taking Their Oil And Gas Fountain - And The Smartest Ones Are To Some Degree - And Making Sure They're Investing In Their People To Unlock Their Potential - Men And Women.
Smart
Men
Oil
What Is The Most Entrepreneurial Country In The Middle East Today? It's Lebanon. Which Country Has No Oil Or Gas? Lebanon. The Same Was True Of Israel, The Same Was Of Bahrain. You Could See A Real Gradation. Turkey, For Instance: No Oil And Gas, Very Entrepreneurial. You Can Either Dig Your Future Out Of The Ground Or You Can Unlock The Potential Of Your People.
Country
Real
Israel
Many Of Us Who Grew Up Playing Golf Know That Our Kids Aren't Doing It. A Great Way To Enhance The Game, Make It Cool Again And Bring Back Some Of The Interest Among Younger People Is To Make Golf The Greenest Sport In An Environmental Sense. Every Course's Greenkeeper Should Think Of Himself Or Herself As The Greenkeeper: Responsible For Preserving The Green, Not Just The Greens.
Sports
Kids
Golf
The Arab Awakening Was Like Watching Elephants Fly: Something You Didn't Expect, Something You Haven't Seen Before, "wow, Elephants Fly."
Elephants
Awakening
Wow
We Need To Become Energy Independent Or At Least Aspire To That.
Independent
Energy
Needs
Just Because We Can't Sell Shares In Nature Doesn't Mean It Has No Value.
Mean
Environment
Share
A Golf Course Should Aspire To Generate As Much Energy As It Consumes - Golf Should Be Leading The Way Toward Energy Net Zero.
Zero
Golf
Energy
Communism Was A Great System For Making People Equally Poor - In Fact, There Was No Better System In The World For That Than Communism. Capitalism Made People Unequally Rich.
People
Facts
World
You'll Know The Green Revolution Has Been Won When The Word 'green' Disappears.
Green
Revolution
Disappear
We're Going In The Wrong Direction And I Think The Only Way To Counter That Is To Bring The Story Home In Really Concrete Ways To People - In Ways That Kids Can Understand And Non-scientists Can Understand.
Home
Kids
Thinking
Why Is It Muslims From Pakistan Or From Egypt Come To America And Thrive, And They Are Frustrated Back Home? It's About Clean Government. It's About A Rule Of Law. It's About Intellectual Property Protection. They've Got All The Talent And Energy Of Anybody Else. As New Immigrants They May Have More Of It, So You Put Them In Our System And They Become Doctors, Lawyers, And Businessmen And Entrepreneurs.
Home
Doctors
Government
Our President's Latest Energy Initiative Was To Go To Saudi Arabia And Beg King Abdullah To Give Us A Little Relief On Gasoline Prices. I Guess There Was Some Justice In That. When You, The President, After 9/11, Tell The Country To Go Shopping Instead Of Buckling Down To Break Our Addiction To Oil, It Ends With You, The President, Shopping The World For Discount Gasoline.
Country
Kings
Gasoline Prices
Something Really Big Happened In The World's Wiring In The Last Decade, But It Was Obscured By The Financial Crisis And Post-9/11. We Went From A Connected World To A Hyperconnected World. I'm Always Struck That Facebook, Twitter, 4g, Iphones, Ipads, High-speech Broadband, Ubiquitous Wireless And Web-enabled Cellphones, The Cloud, Big Data, Cellphone Apps And Skype Did Not Exist Or Were In Their Infancy A Decade Ago.
Change
Data
Ipads
The Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein Once Remarked That If You Ask A Man How Much Is Two Plus Two And He Tells You Five, That Is A Mistake. But If You Ask A Man How Much Is Two Plus Two And He Tells You Ninety-seven, That Is No Longer A Mistake. The Man You Are Talking To Is Operating With A Wholly Different Logic From Your Own.
Mistake
Men
Talking
I Was In Bangalore, India, The Silicon Valley Of India, When I Realized That The World Was Flat.
India
Valleys
World
Some Would Ask Which 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 It Is The Country Next To Pakistan.
Country
India
Pakistan
The First Rule Of Holes Is When You're In One, Stop Digging. When You're In Three, Bring A Lot Of Shovels.
Digging
Three
Firsts
Hillary Clinton Has Decided To Line Up With John Mccain In Pushing To Suspend The Federal Excise Tax On Gasoline, 18.4 Cents A Gallon, For This Summer's Travel Season. This Is Not An Energy Policy. This Is Money Laundering: We Borrow Money From China And Ship It To Saudi Arabia And Take A Little Cut For Ourselves As It Goes Through Our Gas Tanks. What A Way To Build Our Country.
Summer
Country
Cutting
There Is A Connection Between Energy, Climate, Food And Political Stability. That Has Played Out In The Arab Awakening And Is Not Done Playing Out.
Political
Energy
Climate
The Ideal Country In A Flat World Is The One With No Natural Resources, Because Countries With No Natural Resources Tend To Dig Inside Themselves. They Try To Tap The Energy, Entrepreneurship, Creativity, And Intelligence Of Their Own People-men And Women-rather Than Drill An Oil Well.
Country
Creativity
Men
Remember, The Difference Between The World Frozen Over, In An Ice Ball, And The Warming Period We're In Now Is Just 6 Degrees Centigrade. A Change Of Just 1 Degree Can Have A Huge Effect.
World
Remember
When People Get Frustrated, It's When They Feel They Are Living In A Context That Deprives Them Of Dignity, Deprives Them Of Justice And Deprives Them Of The Freedom To Realize Their Full Potential, And That To Me Is What The Arab Awakening Was All About. I Think It Applied To Every Country, And So I Have Been An Unmitigated Supporter Of It.
Country
Thinking
People
It's Easy To Kind Of Say It's The Elite That's Putting You Down. Well, It Wasn't Really The Elite, Technology Will Do That.
Technology
Kind
Easy
When You Study History And Look At Every Civilization That Has Grown Up And Died Off, They All Leave One Remnant: A Major Sports Colosseum At The Heart Of Their Capital. Our Fate Can Be Different; But Only If We Start Doing Things Differently.
Sports
Heart
Fate
We Are Led By Lawyers Who Do Not Understand Either Technology Or Balance Sheets.
Technology
Feet
Balance
The Financial Crisis Just Made The Hole Deeper, Which Is Why Our Stimulus Needs To Be Both Big And Smart, Both Financially And Educationally Stimulating. It Needs To Be Able To Produce Not Only More Shovel-ready Jobs And Shovel-ready Workers, But More Google-ready Jobs And Windows-ready And Knowledge-ready Workers.
Jobs
Smart
Science
Scientists Tend To Focus On What They Don't Know More Than What They Do Know. And There Are A Lot Of Things We Still Don't Know About The Climate. But We Know The Difference Between Climate Variability And Climate Change, And Right Now The Amount Of Carbon In The Atmosphere Is Well Outside The Variability Pattern - And That's Quite Quantifiable.
Focus
Atmosphere
Scientist
Mcdonald's Cannot Flourish Without Mcdonnell Douglas, The Builder Of The F-15.
Mcdonalds
Designer
Sometimes, When My Wife And I Were Going Out To Dinner, I Would Take My Laptop With Me And Work In The Car, So As To Take Advantage Of The Half Hour Going And Coming.
Wife
Car
Laptops
If You Don't Visit A Bad Neighborhood, It Might Visit You.
Visits You
Might
Neighborhood
The Thing You Have To Remember Is, Oil And Gas Are Commodities, And The More We Use Them The More The Price Goes Up, Like Any Commodity. Solar, Wind - They Are Technologies, So The More You Use Them, The More The Price Goes Down.
Technology
Remember
Commodity
I Could See America Playing A Slightly Smaller Role In The Middle East But I Would Not See Us Abandoning The Region And Just Say "oh," Like I Said, "china, Russia, It's Yours Now. Global Focus Is Just On Our Hemisphere." I Don't See That Happening.
Russia
America
Focus
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.
Doctors
Matter
Stuff
I'm A Radical Pro-immigration Advocate. I'm Not Saying We Just Look At The Muslim World Or We Just Look At China, We Just Look At India As A Source Of Our Talent. But, One Thing We Know... First Or Second Generation Or New Immigrants Or Children Of Immigrants Have Started About 40% Of The Fortune 500 Companies. For Me It's Always Been A Really Very Important Issue That I Want America To Be Open To The Most Energetic And Talented People From Around The World.
Children
America
Issues
Every Golf Course Should Have Its Carbon Rating On The Scorecard, Alongside Its Course Rating, Slope, Par And Yardage.
Golf
Should Have
Rating
A 2011 Report Produced By Forrester Research Estimated That The Revenue Generated Through The Sales Of Smartphone And Tablet Applications Will Reach $38 Billion Annually By 2015. Think About That: An Industry That Did Not Exist In 2006 Will Be Generating $38 Billion In Revenues Within A Decade. . . .
Thinking
Smartphones
Tablets
Obviously China Is Clearly Taking The Lead In Some Areas, But When It Comes To The Most Advanced Innovation, It's Still America.
America
Innovation
China
I Am Being Very Humble About The Arab Spring. There's Kind Of A Competition Out There, You Might Have Noticed, Of Who Can Be The First To Say The Arab Spring Is Going To Fail. Everyone Says, "i Told You So, I Told You So About The Muslim Brotherhood." I Have No Desire To Tell Anyone Anything. I Don't Know. I'm Just Listening, Watching. It May Turn Out All These People Are Right, They May Be Wrong. They May Be Right This Year And Wrong Next Year, By The Way. I'm Just Trying To Listen Day To Day, Figure It Out.
Spring
Humble
Years
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.
Country
War
Fighting
Criticizing Israel Is Not Anti-semitic, And Saying So Is Vile. But Singling Out Israel For Opprobrium And International Sanction - Out Of All Proportion To Any Other Party In The Middle East - Is Anti-semitic, And Not Saying So Is Dishonest.
Party
Israel
Middle East
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