Lexus And Olive Tree Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Friedman, in his best-selling book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, declared that what happened in Asia wasn't a crisis at all. "I believe globalization did us all a favor by melting down the economies of Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Brazil in the 1990s, because it laid bare a lot of rotten practices and institutions, — Naomi Klein

So, as I wrote in the paperback edition of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I started telling anyone who asked "Is God in cyberspace?" that the answer is "no" - but He wants to be there. But only we can bring Him there by how we act there. God celebrates a universe with such human freedom because He knows that the only way He is truly manifest in the world is not if He intervenes but if we all choose sanctity and morality in an environment where we are free to choose anything. As Rabbi Marx put it, "In the postbiblical Jewish view of the world, you cannot be moral unless you are totally free. If you are not free, you are really not empowered, and if you are not empowered the choices that you make are not entirely your own. What God says about cyberspace is that you are really free there, and I hope you make the right choices, because if you do I will be present." The — Thomas L. Friedman