Great Throughts Treasury

"No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat."

"No one has expressed what is needed better than Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the London-based al-Arabiya news channel. One of the best-known and most respected Arab journalists working today, he wrote the following, in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (September 6, 2004), after a series of violent incidents involving Muslim extremist groups from Chechnya to Saudi Arabia to Iraq: Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture... The mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life. Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry... We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women. We cannot redeem our extremist youth, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges."

"Now we've entered Globalization 3.0, and it is shrinking the world from size small to a size tiny."

"Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid."

"No policy is sustainable without a public that broadly understands why it's necessary and sees the world the way you do..."

"One of the newest figures to emerge on the world stage in recent years is the social entrepreneur. This is usually someone who burns with desire to make a positive social impact on the world, but believes that the best way of doing it is, as the saying goes, not by giving poor people a fish and feeding them for a day, but by teaching them to fish, in hopes of feeding them for a lifetime. I have come to know several social entrepreneurs in recent years, and most combine a business school brain with a social worker's heart. The triple convergence and the flattening of the world have been a godsend for them. Those who get it and are adapting to it have begun launching some very innovative projects."

"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. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."

"Our challenge today, as individual nations and as a civilization, is to develop a Clean Energy System that can do exactly that - enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things – in terms of generating clean electrons, steadily improving our overall energy and resource efficiency, and promoting conservation. This is our biggest challenge because only such a system will enable us to grow as a world economy – not only without exacerbating energy supply and demand issues, petrodictatorship, climate change, biodiversity loss and energy poverty, but while actually reducing them at the same time. If you don’t have a system, you don’t have a solution. If you hear a politician calling for “renewable energy” walk away. If you hear a politician calling for a “renewable energy system” listen up."

"Only if you give the Palestinians something to lose is there a hope that they will agree to moderate their demands... I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands."

"Out of clutter find simplicity"

"Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists."

"Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards."

"Reading Europe's press, it is really reassuring to see how warmly Europeans have embraced President Bush's formulation that an "axis of evil" threatens world peace. There's only one small problem. President Bush thinks the axis of evil is Iran, Iraq and North Korea, and the Europeans think it's Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice."

"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."

"So what am I? I guess I would call myself a sober optimist...If you are not sober about the scale of the challenge, then you are not paying attention. But if you are not an optimist, you have no chance of generating the kind of mass movement needed to achieve the needed scale."

"So those landscape architects, financial planners, home designers, and real estate brokers who get it, who become skilled at working to build, customize, and interpret models, will also find themselves with a pathway to the new middle."

"Some would ask what 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 the country next to Pakistan."

"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."

"So whatever you plan to do, whether you plan to travel the world next year, go to graduate school, join the workforce, or take some time off to think, don't just listen to your head. Listen to your heart. It's the best career counselor there is. Do what you really love to do and if you don't know quite what that is yet, well, keep searching, because if you find it, you'll bring that something extra to your work that will help ensure you will not be automated or outsourced."

"The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. […] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces."

"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

"Sooner or later, Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr. Hussein's generals to bring him down, and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein."

"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."

"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."

"That is why I introduced the idea that the world has gone from round to flat. Everywhere you turn, hierarchies are being challenged from below or transforming themselves from top-down structure into more horizontal and collaborative ones."

"That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind."

"The fact is, parents and schools and cultures can and do shape people. The most important influence in my life, outside of my family, was my high school journalism teacher, Hattie M. Steinberg. She pounded the fundamentals of journalism into her students -- not simply how to write a lead or accurately transcribe a quote but, more important, how to comport yourself in a professional way. She was nearing sixty at the time I had her as my teacher and high school newspaper adviser in the late 1960s. She was the polar opposite of cool, but we hung around her classroom like it was the malt shop and she was Wolfman Jack. None of us could have articulated it then, but it was because we enjoyed being harangued by her, disciplined by her, and taught by her. She was a woman of clarity and principles in an age of uncertainty. I sit up straight just thinking about her!"

"The fact that no two major countries have done to war since they both got McDonald’s is partly due to economic integration, but it is also due to the presence of American power and America’s willingness to use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization–from Iraq to North Korea. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.[...] McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the US Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. And these fighting forces and institutions are paid for by American taxpayer dollars."

"The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels."

"The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism."

"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."

"The job of government and politicians in such a flattening world is more important than ever. It is to embrace globalization and understand that a fairer, more compassionate, and more egalitarian society lies in a web of policies aimed not at strengthening the old welfare state–or in abolishing it and just letting the market rip–but at reconfiguring it to give more Americans the outlook, education, skills, and safety nets they will need to compete against other individuals in the flat world. That is what compassionate flatism stands for, and it is built around five section areas: leadership, muscle, cushioning, social activism, and parenting."

"The most enduring skill you can bring to the workplace is also one of the most important skills you always had to bring to reporting -- and that is the ability to learn how to learn."

"The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors."

"The next six months in Iraq — which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there — are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."

"The only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed."

"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it — and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."

"The second lesson I learned from journalism is that being a good listener is one of the great keys to life. My friend and colleague, Bob Schieffer of CBS News used to say to me, "The biggest stories I missed as a journalist happened because I was talking when I should have been listening." The ability to be a good listener is one of the most under-appreciated talents a person or a country can have. People often ask me how I, an American Jew, have been able operate in the Arab/Muslim world for 20 years, and my answer to them is always the same. The secret is to be a good listener. It has never failed me. You can get away with really disagreeing with people as long as you show them the respect of really listening to what they have to say and taking it into account when and if it makes sense. Indeed, the most important part of listening is that it is a sign of respect. It's not just what you hear by listening that is important. It is what you say by listening that is important. It's amazing how you can diffuse a whole roomful of angry people by just starting your answer to a question with the phrase, "You're making a legitimate point" or "I hear what you say" and really meaning it. Never underestimate how much people just want to feel that they have been heard, and once you have given them that chance they will hear you."

"The saying in China is If you're one in a million, there's still 1,300 people just like you."

"There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research."

"They all need to go on safari together."

"There is no future in vanilla for most companies in a flat world. A lot of vanilla making in software and other areas is going to shift to open-source communities."

"The simple definition of globalization is the interweaving of markets, technology, information systems, and telecommunications networks in a way that is shrinking the world from a size medium to a size small. It began decades ago, but accelerated dramatically over the past 10 years, as the price of computing power fell and the world became an ever-more densely interconnected place. People resist this shift — see, for example, the G8 protests of 2001 (one of the bloodiest uprisings in recent European history) or the recent rioting in Pittsburgh at this year’s G20 conference—because they think it primarily benefits big business elites to the detriment of everyone else. But globalization didn’t ruin the world—it just flattened it. And on balance that can benefit everyone, especially the poor. Globalization has pulled millions of people out of poverty in India and China, and multiplied the size of the global middle class. It has raised the global standard of living faster than that at any other time in the history of the world, and it is supporting astounding growth. All world economic activity was valued at $7 trillion in 1950. That’s equal to how much growth took place over just the past decade, even including the recent downturn. Whatever people’s fears of change, globalization is here to stay—and, if properly managed, it will be a good thing."

"There’s a difference between being able to make long distance phone calls cheaper on the Internet and walking around Riyadh with a PDA where you can have all of Google in your pocket. It’s a difference in degree that’s so enormous it becomes a difference in kind."

"Toyota Prius is a perfect example of a new system replacing an old one and creating a whole new function that is greater than the sum of its parts. The Prius is not a better car. It is a better system. The Prius has brakes. All cars have brakes. The Prius has a battery. All cars have batteries. The Prius has an engine. All cars have engines. What is new about the Prius is that its designers looked at it as a system that could perform more than one function – not just a collection of car parts whose primary function was to turn the wheels. They said to themselves, “Why not use the energy from braking to genreat5e electrons that we could then store in the battery and then use that for driving as many miles as possible, instead of using the gasoline in the gas tank? And when this Prius is going downhill, let’s use that kinetic energy created by the spinning of the wheels and store that in the battery too, to power the car when it wants to go uphill.” By taking a systems approach, in other words, Toyota was able to move from an incremental change in miles per gallon to a quantum leap – a car that could generate some of its own energy."

"We are entering an era of creative destruction on steroids."

"Using computer simulation and graphics, you can now bring all sorts of data together to create models that will show you how all kinds of complex things work together–before you actually go through the process of building them."

"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 are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets."

"We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that."