Niall Ferguson Quotes

27 quotes in 497 categories

• From the earliest days, the Rothschilds appreciated the importance of proximity to politicians, the men who determined not only the extent of budget deficits but…
• American Empire- it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need…
• It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate…
• No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.
• The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.
• It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average…
• A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.
• As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.
• Between 1980 and 2000 the number of patents registered in Israel was 7652 compared with 367 for all the Arab countries combined.
• Today, the average Korean works a thousand hours more a year than the average German. A thousand. ... That is the end of the Great…
• For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one…
• When bond prices fall, interest rates soar, with painful consequences for all borrowers.
• I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.
• I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and…
• The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.
• If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to…
• I think that it is important to be gregarious, and that friendships are not just a leisure pursuit, that they are an integral part of…
• Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It…
• I was never a very convincing social conservative, and always avoided associating myself with that part of the broader conservative movement.

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