Thomas Friedman Quotes

My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

Think about it: Every educated person is not rich, but almost every education person has a job and a way out of poverty. So education is a fundamental solution to poverty.

When I was a little girl, if I didn't eat my soup, my mother would say, 'You have to think of all the Chinese children who have nothing to eat.' But now, for my children, Chinese people make everything, and for my grandchildren, they buy everything.

Since my retirement, I've spent a lot of time trying to help the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina. A society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens.

There was a time when you could make a living by the sweat of your brow. Those days are over!

For the first time we have the technical capacity to free mankind from the scourge of hunger.

Children will be kept in much better order, be better provided for, and from infancy be inured to work, which is of no small consequence to the making of them sober and industrious all their lives after.

In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.

In the 19th century, some people looked at the condition of slavery and said that it was monstrous and unconscionable; that it must be abolished. ... Today the condition of hunger in a world of plenty is equally monstrous and unconscionable and it too must be abolished. We must become the 'new abolitionists'.

These institutions are generally more skilled at getting rich off those living in the lower economic reaches than they are in preparing them for the job market.

I was told by my father nine times a day that you were going to get a job the minute you finish your studies.

My father grew up with no money. He was raised in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the U.S. My mother helped him sew labels into his ties. My life has been very comfortable, sure, but they instilled into us the importance of the work ethic.

I know that if I had got educated, I might have ended up as a call-center employee.

The technologists and entrepreneurs I know are generally good people. If they were given a choice, 'Do your job and eliminate normal jobs' or 'Do your job and create abundant opportunities,' they would choose the latter. Most of them would happily even take a small hit to do so. But this isn't a choice they're given.

Those who lived in peaceful nations had looked the other way as members of their own species starved on their door step.

We stand by as children starve by the millions because we lack the will to end hunger. But we have found the will to develop missiles capable of flying over the polar cap and landing within a few hundred feet of their target. This is not innovation. It is a profound distortion of humanity's purpose on earth.

India has probably lost its position to China as the world's workshop. At the same time it has the power to be ahead of China when it comes to knowledge. Not that the Chinese are far behind. They will get there. But our challenge is to invest sufficiently in education.

Now it may seem so far from where we all are It's something we can't neglect It's something I can't neglect Now won't you give some bread to get the starving fed

Hunger is actually the worst weapon of mass destruction. It claims millions of victims each year.

Let no one go hungry away. If any of the kind of people should be in want of corn, supply their necessities, provided it does not encourage them in idleness.

Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets

Why do babies starve /When there's enough food to feed the world /Why when there's so many of us /Are there people still alone

What sort of government is it that permits so many children to go to school hungry, without even a morsel of food in their stomachs? It cannot be! It must not be!

In the U.S and Europe over the last year we've been focused on the prices of gasoline at the pump. While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it's getting more and more difficult every day.

It is unacceptable that more than 1 billion people are hungry every day while another billion are obese.