Niall Ferguson > Quotes

“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 because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.”
― Niall Ferguson

“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 overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.”
― Niall Ferguson

“The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

“there really is no such thing as ‘the future’, singular. There are only multiple, unforeseeable futures, which will never lose their capacity to take us by surprise.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition

“In a time of chaos, it is the micro-manager who ascends”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“It was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America – an idea about the way people should govern themselves. Some people make the mistake of calling that idea ‘democracy’ and imagining that any country can adopt it merely by holding elections. In reality, democracy was the capstone of an edifice that had as its foundation the rule of law – to be precise, the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“What makes a civilization real to its inhabitants, in the end, is not just the splendid edifices at it centre, nor even the smooth functioning of the institutions they house. At its core, a civilization is the texts that are taught in its schools, learned by its students and recollected in times of tribulation.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“perennial truths of financial history. Sooner or later every bubble bursts. Sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers. Sooner or later greed turns to fear.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition

“The real social contract, (Edmund Burke) argued, was not Rousseau's social contract between the noble savage and the General Will, but a "partnership" between the present generation and future generations.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“we shall quickly find ourselves about as important to the algorithms as animals currently are to us.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“intellectual diversity is the form of diversity that seems to be least valued in universities,”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“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 the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.”
― Niall Ferguson

“The success of a civilization is measured not just in its aesthetic achievements but also, and surely more importantly, in the duration and quality of life of its citizens.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“The great thinkers of the eighteenth century were also pioneering tourists”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“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 them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.”
― Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World

“Was there something distinctive about American civil society that gave democracy a better chance than in France, as Tocqueville argued? Was the already centralized French state more likely to produce a Napoleon than the decentralized United States? We cannot be sure. But it is not unreasonable to ask how long the US constitution would have lasted if the United States had suffered the same military and economic strains that swept away the French constitution of 1791”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“money is a matter of belief, even faith: belief in the person paying us; belief in the person issuing the money he uses or the institution that honours his cheques or transfers. Money is not metal. It is trust inscribed. And it does not seem to matter much where it is inscribed: on silver, on clay, on paper, on a liquid crystal display.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition

“Because of preferential attachment, most social networks are profoundly inegalitarian.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“Between 1980 and 2000 the number of patents registered in Israel was 7652 compared with 367 for all the Arab countries combined. In 2008 alone is really inventors applied to register 9591 new patents. The equivalent figure for Iran was 50 and for all majority Muslim countries in the world with 5657.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“simple point is that institutions are to humans what hives are to bees. They are the structures within which we organize ourselves as groups. You know when you are inside one, just as a bee knows when it is in the hive. Institutions have boundaries, often walls. And, crucially, they have rules.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die

“the state of the future will need to function more like the human immune system”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“The result is one of the greatest paradoxes of modern history: that an economic system designed to offer infinite choice to the individual has ended up homogenizing humanity.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“To my mind, a civilization is much more than just the contents of a few first-rate art galleries. It is a highly complex human organization. Its paintings, statues and buildings may well be its most eye-catching achievements, but they are unintelligible without some understanding of the economic, social and political institutions which devised them, paid for them, executed them – and preserved them for our gaze.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“the Internet is merely ‘the modern public square’,”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“Money, it is conventional to argue, is a medium of exchange, which has the advantage of eliminating inefficiencies of barter; a unit of account, which facilitates valuation and calculation; and a store of value, which allows economic transactions to be conducted over long periods as well as geographical distances. To perform all these functions optimally, money has to be available, affordable, durable, fungible, portable and reliable.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition

“Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori ‘Conception is sin, birth is pain, life is toil, death is inevitable.”
― Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest

“biggest changes in history are the achievements of thinly documented, informally organized groups”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook

“Sometimes, as in the case of the American Revolution, crucial roles turn out to have been played by people who were not leaders but connectors.”
― Niall Ferguson, The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook