Thomas L. Friedman Quote
Sometimes the wings come off the plane, said Mayor Jacobs, but people will accept that—if they think you’re trying to get to outer space. We were trying to do the right thing. The community was extraordinarily accepting of that. If you are terrified all the time of being excoriated in the press for some minor screwup, well, I have news for you, all progress happens in fits and starts … The space project would never have happened after the first rocket blew up if people did not accept that. If you want to change the way people view government, you have to change the way government views people. If you view them as a necessary evil, they won’t trust you—that is how they will view you. But government also has to do the little things well, added Jacobs, because they are not little—the stop signs, the curbs, the sidewalks, mowing the parks—[they are] what make people feel like they are living in a community … We have only one stock in trade—it is not building sidewalks or plowing the streets—it is trust, and if you lose that, you have nothing.
Sometimes the wings come off the plane, said Mayor Jacobs, but people will accept that—if they think you’re trying to get to outer space. We were trying to do the right thing. The community was extraordinarily accepting of that. If you are terrified all the time of being excoriated in the press for some minor screwup, well, I have news for you, all progress happens in fits and starts … The space project would never have happened after the first rocket blew up if people did not accept that. If you want to change the way people view government, you have to change the way government views people. If you view them as a necessary evil, they won’t trust you—that is how they will view you. But government also has to do the little things well, added Jacobs, because they are not little—the stop signs, the curbs, the sidewalks, mowing the parks—[they are] what make people feel like they are living in a community … We have only one stock in trade—it is not building sidewalks or plowing the streets—it is trust, and if you lose that, you have nothing.
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About Thomas L. Friedman
Friedman began his career as a reporter and won two Pulitzer Prizes in the 1980s for his coverage on conflict in Lebanon and politics in Israel, followed by a further prize in 2002 for commentary on the war on terror.