Risk models are a substitute for historical knowledge, because they tend to work with just three years' worth of data. But three… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“What makes a civilization real to its inhabitants, in the end, is not just the splendid edifices at it centre, nor even… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
What's so seductive about the efficient markets hypothesis is that it applies nine years out of ten. A lot of the time… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“Not the last time in Western history, the revolutionaries armed themselves with a new religion to steel themselves for greater outrageous.” — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible. — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“there really is no such thing as ‘the future’, singular. There are only multiple, unforeseeable futures, which will never lose their capacity… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos. — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“I wrote this book because I had formed a strong impression that the people currently living were paying insufficient attention to the dead.” — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“Consider this: the US economy created 2.4 million jobs in the three years beginning in June 2009. In the same period, 3.3 million Americans… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
I think the rise of quantitative econometrics and a highly mathematical approach to risk management was the obverse of a decline in interest in… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“Is it better today to be in a network, which gives you influence, than in a hierarchy, which gives you power?” — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet. — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah,… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“Many historians still tend to assume that the spread of an idea or an ideology is a function of its inherent content in relation… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“the twentieth century ran a series of experiments, imposing quite different institutions on two sets of Germans (in West and East), two sets of… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“Historians are not scientists. They cannot (and should not even trying to) establish universal laws of social or political "physics" with reliable predictive powers.… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
You really struggle to be a successful empire if you are also the world's biggest debtor. — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
“One difficulty is that we cannot always reconstruct the past thoughts of these non-Western peoples, for not all of them existed in civilizations with… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely… — Niall Ferguson Copy Share Image
