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Supply Chains Cannot Tolerate Even 24 Hours Of Disruption. So If You Lose Your Place In The Supply Chain Because Of Wild Behavior You Could Lose A Lot. It Would Be Like Pouring Cement Down One Of Your Oil Wells.

-Thomas Friedman

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Supply Chains Cannot Tolerate

Thomas Friedman

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Supply Chains Cannot Tolerate Even 24 Hours Of Disruption. So If You Lose Your Place In The Supply Chain Because Of Wild Behavior You Could Lose A Lot. It Would Be Like Pouring Cement Down One Of Your Oil Wells.

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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.

All One Needs To Do Is Just To Go To Any Hospital In America And See The Number Of Pakistani Or Indian Or Lebanese, Or Syrian, Or Egyptian Doctors, Who Are Either First Generation Or Themselves Immigrants, To Know, And I'm A Big Believer - Brains Are Distributed Evenly Around The World. What Aren't Distributed Evenly Are Opportunities, Stable Government, Educational Institutions, Etc.

Every Sport Needs Its Temple, Its Cathedral.

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If You Don't Have An Ethic Of Conservation, You Basically Have A License To Drive A Hummer Through The Amazon.

If You Don't Visit A Bad Neighborhood, It Might Visit You.

Tap Into People's Dignity And They Will Do Anything For You. Ignore It, And They Won't Lift A Finger.

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.

Two Things Are Going On At The Same Time With The Flattening Of The World: The Relentless Quest For Efficiency Is Squeezing Some Of The Fat Out Of Life.

We've Gone From Thinking The Fuels That Powered Our Growth Were Inexpensive, Inexhaustible And Benign To Understanding They Are Exhaustible, Expensive And Toxic. Once You Frame The Problem That Way, People Will Look At Solutions Differently.

I Said That More People In More Places Can Now Compete, Connect And Collaborate With Equal Power And Equal Tools Than Ever Before.

America Needs Rebooting.

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.

You'll Know The Green Revolution Has Been Won When The Word 'green' Disappears.

Change Your Leaders, Not Your Light Bulbs.

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.

The Country That Owns Green, That Dominates That Industry, Is Going To Have The Most Energy Security, National Security, Economic Security, Competitive Companies, Healthy Population And, Most Of All, Global Respect.

I Think That The Drama Of People Rising Up Demanding Their Own Freedom Is One That Resonates Very Deeply With America. I Think That President Barack Obama Has Tried And Would Like To Find A Way To Relate To The Arab Spring, But I Think He Also Wants To Be, Rightly, Very Careful That We Don't Take It Over. It Is Very Important That They Own This. He Is Trying To Influence It This Way But Without, "we're So Never Going To Go To The Extreme Of Iraq And Putting Boots On The Ground Again."

There Is No Substitute For Face-to-face Reporting And Research.

Even If America Tomorrow - And It Won't Happen Overnight - But If We Did Reduce Our Demand For Gas And Natural Gas And Crude Oil By A Significant Degree, That Does Have An Exponential Effect On Producers In The Middle East, Everything Else Being Equal. But If China's Demand Is Growing And India's Demand Is Growing, They Are Not Going Back.

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.

I Think The Arab Awakening Has Changed Everything And I Think A Lot Will Depend On What People There Ask Of Us, May Be Nothing, It May Be A Lot. I Think That Really Depends How They Find Their Voice And What They See As Their Real Interest, And Hopefully That Would Be For More Schools And Not More Tanks.

Yes, The World Is Now Flat For Publishing As Well.

Syria Is On The Back End Of Basically A Decade-long Drought. Over The Last Decade, Farmers And Herders Have Been Ravaged In Syria Forcing Them To Give Up And Move To Urban Areas. This Has Put A Huge Strain On Urban Resources, And It's Surely One Of The Reasons For The Uprising There.

I Think No Country Is Going To Be Immune From The Arab Awakening Because The Arab Awakening Is Driven By Deep Human Longing For Dignity, For Justice And For Freedom. I Think That Applies To Young People In Saudi Arabia As Much As To Young People In Egypt, Tunisia, Or Yemen, Or Libya, Or Syria. If I Were In Saudi Arabia, I Would Be Getting Ahead Of This And Looking For Ways To Appreciate Those Aspirations And Align My Country With Them.

Guantanamo Bay Is The Anti-statue Of Liberty.

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.

American Young People Have Got To Understand From An Early Age That The World Pays Off On Results, Not On Effort. Not Everyone Should Win A Prize No Matter Where He Or She Finishes.

At The End Of The Day, No Amount Of Investing, No Amount Of Clean Electrons, No Amount Of Energy Efficiency Will Save The Natural World If We Are Not Paying Attention To It - If We Are Not Paying Attention To All The Things That Nature Give Us For Free: Clean Air, Clean Water, Breathtaking Vistas, Mountains For Skiing, Rivers For Fishing, Oceans For Sailing, Sunsets For Poets, And Landscapes For Painters. What Good Is It To Have Wind-powered Lights To Brighten The Night If You Can't See Anything Green During The Day? Just Because We Can't Sell Shares In Nature Doesn't Mean It Has No Value.

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.

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.

There Are Elites That Are Real Leaders And Role Models. There Are Elites That Are Really Selfish And Want To Pull Up The Ladder Once They've Reached The Roof.

Everything I’ve Ever Gotten In Life Is Largely Due To The Fact That I Was Born In This Country, America, At This Time With These Opportunities For Its Citizens. It Is The Primary Obligation Of Our Generation To Turn Over A Similar America To Our Kids.

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.

When You Can't Rely On Sticking A Pipe In The Ground, What You Have To Rely On Is Unlocking The Energy And Talent Of All Your People - Men And Women.

Remember, In China When You Are One In A Million, There Are 1,300 Other People Just Like You.

We Have To Fight The Terrorists As If There Were No Rules And Preserve Our Open Society As If There Were No Terrorists.

A Vision Without Resources Is An Hallucination.

We've Given Iraq Six Months And I Don't Think Things Are Really Working Out, So We Should Probably Bring Our Troops Home.

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.

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.

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.

The First Rule Of Holes Is When You're In One, Stop Digging. When You're In Three, Bring A Lot Of Shovels.

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.

Iraq Today Does Have A Chance To Shape Its Own Future. They May Not Do That, Or This Generation May Not Do That. But Maybe The Next One Will, I Don't Know. They May Try And Fail, And Stumble, Get Up And Fall Back.

When You Lose Your Job, The Unemployment Rate Isn't Four Percent, It's 100 Percent.

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.

If E-mail Had Been Around Before The Telephone Was Invented, People Would Have Said, 'hey, Forget E-mail! With This New Telephone Invention I Can Actually Talk To People!'.

Service Culture

What We Have In The Bush Team Is A Faith-based Administration. It Launched A Faith-based War In Iraq, On The Basis Of Faith-based Intelligence, With A Faith-based Plan For Iraqi Reconstruction, Supported By Faith-based Tax Cuts To Generate Faith-based Revenues.

My Mom Enlisted In The U.s. Navy In World War Ii, And My Parents Actually Bought Our Home Thanks To The Loan She Got Through The Gi Bill.

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.

The Great Thing About Cheap Natural Gas, Again It's Cheap, And It Provides A Cleaner Alternative To Coal. But It's Still A Fossil Fuel, And Because It's Still A Fossil Fuel, It Still Emits Carbon.

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.

We Need To Become Energy Independent Or At Least Aspire To That.

Big Breakthroughs Happen When What Is Suddenly Possible Meets What Is Desperately Needed

The Reason That We Are Becoming Less Equal Is Because Of The Greater Requirements, Secure Requirements, For A Good Job. This Goes Back To The '80s Basically, This Started Changing As Globalization And The It Revolution Merged, And Each Started To Drive The Other.

Oil Is A Tangible Commodity, So There Is A Global Market. The Fact That We May Need Less May Affect The Global Price Because We're Big Consumers: We Probably Take About A Quarter Of Global Demand. But If Suddenly, Let's Just Use A Crazy Example, Fighting In The Middle East Led To The Closure Of The Strait Of Hormuz And No Oil Could Get Out Through The Strait Of Hormuz, Well That Would Affect China, India, Europe, It Will Affect The Whole Global Economy. It Will Affect Us, Too, Then.

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.

The Hidden Hand Of The Market Will Never Work Without A Hidden Fist -- Mcdonald's Cannot Flourish Without Mcdonnell Douglas, The Builder Of The F-15. And The Hidden Fist That Keeps The World Safe For Silicon Valley's Technologies Is Called The United States Army, Air Force, Navy And Marine Corps.

Everyone Needs To Get Together And Say: "our Objective Is To Preserve And Enhance The Game And The Planet On Which It's Played. To Make Golf A Leader In Greening The World."

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.

Your Boss Doesn't Care What You Know, Because The Google Machine Knows Everything. Your Boss Cares About What You Can Do With What You Know. That's The Only Thing Your Boss Will Pay For.

You Really Do Have To Wonder Whether A Few Years From Now We’ll Look Back At The First Decade Of The 21st Century — When Food Prices Spiked, Energy Prices Soared, World Population Surged, Tornados Plowed Through Cities, Floods And Droughts Set Records, Populations Were Displaced And Governments Were Threatened By The Confluence Of It All — And Ask Ourselves: What Were We Thinking? How Did We Not Panic When The Evidence Was So Obvious That We’d Crossed Some Growth/climate/natural Resource/population Redlines All At Once?

Never Before In The History Of The Planet Have So Many People, On Their Own, Had The Ability To Find So Much Information About So Many Things And About So Many Other People.

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.

We Have To Be The Best Global Citizens We Can Be.

If You Are Self-motivated, Wow, This World Is Tailored For You. The Boundaries Are All Gone. But If You're Not Self-motivated, This World Will Be A Challenge Because The Walls, Ceilings And Floors That Protected People Are Also Disappearing. That Is What I Mean When I Say "it Is A 401(k) World." Government Will Do Less For You. Companies Will Do Less For You. Unions Can Do Less For You. There Will Be Fewer Limits, But Also Fewer Guarantees. Your Specific Contribution Will Define Your Specific Benefits Much More. Just Showing Up Will Not Cut It.

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