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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.

-Thomas Friedman

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The Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thomas Friedman

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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.

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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."

America Was The Funder Of Petro-dictatorships. We Treated All These Countries As Basically Big, Large Gas Stations: Libya Station, Iraq Station, Iran Station, Egypt Station, Syria Station, And All We Asked Of Them Were Three Things: Keep Your Palms Open, Your Prices Low And Don't Bother Israel Too Much, And You Can Do Whatever You Want To Your Own People.

Every Sport Needs Its Temple, Its Cathedral.

The Arab Awakening Was Like Watching Elephants Fly: Something You Didn't Expect, Something You Haven't Seen Before, "wow, Elephants Fly."

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.

I Attended Public School With The Same Group Of Kids From K Through 12.

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.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Said It Best: "your Son Is Sick. Ninety-eight Doctors Give You One Diagnosis, Two Doctors Give You Another. Who Are You Going To Go With?" Well, Why Would It Be The Conservative Position To Go With The Two? That's Not Conservative, That's Crazy.

The Middle East Would Always Be An Important Trading Partner In Just A Market Sense, Like America Is A Big Market For Us, Asia Is A Big Market, Europe Is A Big Market. You Are Going To Have Hundreds Of Millions Of Consumers There, From Just A Standard Market Point Of View, From A Very Narrow American Point Of View.

Watching Both The Health Care And Climate/energy Debates In Congress, It Is Hard Not To Draw The Following Conclusion: There Is Only One Thing Worse Than One-party Autocracy, And That Is One-party Democracy, Which Is What We Have In America Today. One-party Autocracy Certainly Has Its Drawbacks. But When It Is Led By A Reasonably Enlightened Group Of People, As China Is Today, It Can Also Have Great Advantages.

Rock Stars Get Room Keys, I Get Business Cards.

In The Hyperconnected World, There Is Only “good” “better” And “best.

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.

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.

If I Were Advising President Obama, Since He's The One Running, I Would Have Made His Campaign Very Simple. I Promise That In Four Years, I Will Get More Americans, As Many As I Possibly Can, The Opportunity And Access To Some Form Of Post-secondary Education. I Want More Of Them To Graduate High School With The Skill-set Of Post-secondary Education And I Want More Of Them To Be Able To Obtain That Post-secondary Education. This Is The Only Way We Are Going To Close The Income Gap.

I Think There Are Different Kinds Of Elites. I Think There Are Venal Elites, And Self-interested Elites, And Selfish Elites, And I Think There Are Visionary Elites.

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.

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

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

We Are Entering A Hyperconnected World Where Every Boss Now Has More Access, Cheap Access To Cheap Labor, Cheap Genius, Cheap Robot, Cheap Software, And Then This World Averages Over. There Is Only One Answer To That, And That Is To Get Everyone As Close As Possible To Some Form Of Post-secondary Education, It Could Be Vocational, It Can Be Liberal Arts, It Can Be Science And Technology.

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.

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.

Our Kids Are Going To Be So Angry With Us One Day. We've Charged Their Future On Our Visa Cards.

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.

I Don't Think That Stability And The Status Quo Go Together At All, Not In A Flat World Where People Are Integrated, Where Women Are Assuming New Roles, Where Young People Want To Be Consulted And Participate. I Think The Trick Is To Open Up, Move Down The Path Of Reform, Do It In A Way That Is Consistent With Your Own Society's Stability And Culture, And Just Don't Think You Can Do Nothing.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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America Needs Rebooting.

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You Win The Presidency By Connecting With The American People's Gut Insecurities And Aspirations. You Win With A Concept.

Desktop Freelancers And Innovative Startups All Over The World

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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.

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

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.

There Is Something More Severe Than The Problem With Thomas Friedman, Which Can Be Generalized To Represent Someone Causing Action While Being Completely Unaccountable For His Words.

The Arab Awakening Has Been, Up To Now, A Lot About Freedom From Dictatorial Regimes - Syria, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain And Egypt. But Once You Got Freedom From, Then You Need Freedom To. Freedom From Is About Destroying Things. Freedom To Is About Constructing Things, Constructing The Rule Of Law.

America Is Interested In Change And Reform In The Middle East But In A Stable Way.

In The Future, How We Educate Our Children May Prove To Be More Important Than How Much We Educate Them.

In A Hyper-connected World Where Average Is Over, There Is One Thing We Know Absolutely For Sure: Every Good Job Will Require More Education.

Capitalism Makes People Unequally Rich. Communism Makes People Equally Poor.

I Don't Think We Replaced The Soviet Union With Al Qaida. I Think We Replaced, We Should Have, Soviet Union With The Merger Of Globalization And The It Revolution. I Think It's That. That Is The Real Challenge That We Face Today. Unlike The Soviet Union, It Has No Face, It Has No Missiles, But It Is Something That Challenges Every Job, Every City And Every Community.

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Until We Fully Understand What Turned Two Brothers Who Allegedly Perpetrated The Boston Marathon Bombings Into Murderers, It Is Hard To Make Any Policy Recommendation Other Than This: We Need To Redouble Our Efforts To Make America Stronger And Healthier So It Remains A Vibrant Counterexample To Whatever Bigoted Ideology May Have Gripped These Young Men....and The Best Place To Start Is With A Carbon Tax.

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.

Just Because We Can't Sell Shares In Nature Doesn't Mean It Has No Value.

I Firmly Believe That The Next Great Breakthrough In Bioscience Could Come From A 15-year-old Who Downloads The Human Genome In Egypt.

A Generation Ago [the Democratic Party] Stood For Progressive Change. Now They Defend Every Federal Program As If Each Were Sacred. They Have Become The Most Conservative Force In American Politics.

What About The Rest Of Life? Respect For The Sanctity Of Life, If You Believe That It Begins At Conception, Cannot End At Birth.

Basically All The World's Computer Parts Come From The Same Supply Chain That Runs From Korea, Down Through Coastal China, Over To Taiwan, And Down To Malaysia.

There Is Definitely Global Warming, And Man Is Definitely Contributing To It. Go Out To, Say, Montana And Talk To Some Pretty Conservative People, Hunters And Fishermen. They Know That In The Trout Stream They Fished When They Were Growing Up, The Trout Are Stressed Because The Water Temperature Is Going Up. They Know The Hunting Season Has Been Delayed Because The Snows Are Coming Later, And Therefore The Elk Aren't Coming Down From The Mountains.

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.

Gasoline Prices

Our Bailout Of Detroit Will Be Remembered As The Equivalent Of Pouring Billions Of Taxpayers' Money Into The Mail-order Catalogue Business On The Eve Of The Birth Of Ebay.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

If You Don't Visit The Bad Neighborhoods, The Bad Neighborhoods Are Going To Visit You.

Optimists Are Usually Wrong. But All The Great Change In History, Positive Change, Was Done By Optimists.

Positive Change

I Have A Daughter Who Is A Sophomore In College And Another Who Is In The 11th Grade Of High School.

That's Right-the Striking Thing About Greenhouse Gases Is The Diversity Of Sources That Emit Them. A Herd Of Cattle Belching Can Be Worse Than Highway Full Of Hummers.

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.

What Is Al Qaeda? It's An Open Source Religious Political Movement That Works Off The Global Supply Chain.

It Has Always Been My View That Terrorism Is Not Spawned By The Poverty Of Money; It Is Spawned By The Poverty Of Dignity. Humiliation Is The Most Underestimated Force In International Relations And In Human Relations. It Is When People Or Nations Are Humiliated That They Really Lash Out And Engage In Extreme Violence.

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.

Most Jobs Are Outsourced To The Past, They Aren't Outsourced To India Or Mexico Or Pakistan Or Anywhere Else.

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

The Only Engine Big Enough To Impact Mother Nature Is Father Greed.

Geopolitics Is All About Leverage. We Cannot Make Ourselves Safer Abroad Unless We Change Our Behavior At Home.

What We Do Know Is That The Planet Is Going From 7 Billion People Today To 9 Billion. More People Want To Live Like Us, Drive American- Size Cars, Live In An American-size Home, And Eat American-size Big Macs. What Does That Mean? It Means That Energy Demand Is Going To Be Going Up.

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.

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.

We Are Led By Lawyers Who Do Not Understand Either Technology Or Balance Sheets.

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

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.

Iraq May Still Have A Decent Outcome...but Even If It Becomes Switzerland, We Overpaid For It.

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.

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

C'mon Kids! Wake Up And Smell The Co2! Take Over Your Administration Building, Occupy Your University President's Office, Or Storm In On The Next Meeting Of Your College's Board Of Trustees Until They Agree To Make Your School Carbon Neutral.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Water Is Our Next Great Environmental Challenge. It Is The New Oil. How Are We Going To Preserve This Sport Unless We Are Designing And Maintaining Golf Courses That Are Energy Net Zero, Carbon Net Zero And Water Net Zero? Or Ideally, Energy Positive, Carbon Positive And Water Positive, Where They Are Taking Out More Than They Are Using.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Several Technological And Political Forces Have Converged, And That Has Produced A Global, Web-enabled Playing Field That Allows For Multiple Forms Of Collaboration Without Regard To Geography Or Distance - Or Soon, Even Language.

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.

I've Always Believed The World Would Be A Better Place If More People Everywhere Have A Chance To Shape Their Own Future And Realize Their Full Potential. I Think That Is What Life Is About.

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

No, Most Of Our Political Elite Has Not Realized That The World Is Flat.

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.

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?

I'm From Minnesota. I'm Optimistic. I Mean, That's Just Who I Am.

The Hidden Hand Of The Market Will Never Work Without A Hidden Fist.

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.

Rock Stars Get Room Keys, I Get Business Cards. Wherever I Go I Meet Innovators Of Wind Power Equipment, Solar Energy Operators.

The Golden Straitjacket Is The Defining Political-economic Garment Of Globalization. [...] The Tighter You Wear It, The More Gold It Produces.

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.

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.

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."

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

America Is The Greatest Engine Of Innovation That Has Ever Existed, And It Can't Be Duplicated Anytime Soon, Because It Is The Product Of A Multitude Of Factors: Extreme Freedom Of Thought, An Emphasis On Independent Thinking, A Steady Immigration Of New Minds, A Risk-taking Culture With No Stigma Attached To Trying And Failing, A Noncorrupt Bureaucracy, And Financial Markets And A Venture Capital System That Are Unrivaled At Taking New Ideas And Turning Them Into Global Products.

You Always Have To Remember That Mother Nature Is A Lot Like Your Body. If Your Temperature Goes From 98.6 To 100.6, You Don't Feel So Good. If It Goes From 100.6 To 102.6, Well, You Call The Doctor. If It Goes From 102.6 To 104.6, You're In The Emergency Room At A Hospital. The Same With Mother Nature - Small Changes In Global Average Temperatures Have A Huge Climate Effect.

By 'flat' I Did Not Mean That The World Is Getting Equal. I Said That More People In More Places Can Now Compete, Connect And Collaborate With Equal Power And Equal Tools Than Ever Before. That's Why An Indian In Bangalore Can Take Care Of The Office Work Of American Doctors Or Read The X-rays Of German Hospitals.

When Widely Followed Public Figures Feel Free To Say Anything, Without Any Fact-checking, It Becomes Impossible For A Democracy To Think Intelligently About Big Issues.

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.

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

What I Want Is Natural Gas To Be A Bridge To A Cleaner Energy Future, Not A Dam Against A Cleaner Energy Future, Not A Dead End. To Get This Right, To Get The Most Out Of It, We Not Only Have To Make Sure We Exploit Natural Gas In A Clean Way - It's A Challenge - But We Also Have To Make Sure That We Are Instilling And Implementing All The Incentives To Win Solar, Nuclear Energy Efficiency That Will Make Them Continually Competitive With Natural Gas In The Future.

Hope And Optimism Aren't Just Attitudes, They Are Life Strategies.

A Vision Without Resources Is An Hallucination.

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.

I'm Pretty Much An Open Book. I Am A Fanatic Golfer And Golf Nut. If I Have Three Free Hours Any Day, My First Choice Is To Run To The Golf Course If The Weather Is Nice.

I Don't Know What The Average Income Of Muslim-americans Is, But Muslim-american Immigrants Of Recent Vintage, I Bet They Have A Very Above-average Representation In Professional And Business Occupations.

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.

What Every Employer Is Looking For Is Not Someone Who Can Do The Job, But Someone Who Can Reinvent The Job.

When I Was Growing Up, My Parents Told Me, 'finish Your Dinner. People In China And India Are Starving.' I Tell My Daughters, 'finish Your Homework. People In India And China Are Starving For Your Job.'

Change Your Leaders, Not Your Light Bulbs.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Understands That The Standing Ovation He Got In Congress This Year Was Not For His Politics. That Ovation Was Bought And Paid For By The Israel Lobby.

I Love America. I Think It's The Best Country In The World. But I Also Think We're Not Tending To Our Sauce.

If We Don't Have A More Serious Energy Policy, The Difference Between A Good Day And Bad Day For America From Here On Will Hinge On How The 86-year-old King Of Saudi Arabia Manages...change.

Saudi Hijackers First Came Into Contact With Al-qaeda And Went Through Terrorism 101 When They Signed Up For The Jihad In Afghanistan.

Golf Has An Ambivalent Relationship With The Environment. On One Hand, It's A Great Preserver Of Open Spaces. Golf Doesn't Pave The World - It Helps To Green The World. But The Downside Is, It Uses A Lot Of Fertilizer, Pesticides And Water. And This Is In A World Where We Know That Synthetic Fertilizers And Pesticides Are Toxic, And Water Is More And More Scarce. Golf Could Do A Lot More.

It Is Hard To Partner With Someone When You Become So Radioactive No One Wants To Stand Next To You.

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