Thomas Friedman Quotes

Today knowledge is free. It's like air, it's like water... There's no competitive advantage to knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn't care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.

Men are paid, not merely for what they know, but more particularly for WHAT THEY DO WITH THAT WHICH THEY KNOW.

What you know is what you know, both culturally and practically, and you use it to the greatest effect you can.

I'd say I learned a lot. It's all about whether or not I can apply it.

Learning locked in mildewed books is of little use to anyone and therefore of no value unless it can be used.

A man has only so much knowledge as he puts to work.

From the first, I made my learning, what little it was, useful every way I could.

Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven't learned a thing until you take action and use it.

All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say any fragment of knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits, may not some day be turned to account.

The world does not pay men for that which they “know”. It pays them for what they do, or induce others to do.

The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all.

Don't be the ammunition wagon, be the rifle... knowledge exists primarily for use.

When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great, the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefit.

It is not a question how much a man knows, but what use he can make of what he knows.

Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.

Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.

Knowledge must come through action. You can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

However much you are read in theory, if thou hast no practice thou art ignorant

But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.

The more information that's out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn't what's scarce; it's the willingness to do something with it.

There are branches of learning and education which we must study merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be valued for their own sake; whereas those kinds of knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed necessary, and exist for the sake of other things.

Experience by itself teaches nothing... Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning.

We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life.

Knowledge applied is productivity.

In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.