143 Quotes by Niall Ferguson

Is it better today to be in a network, which gives you influence, than in a hierarchy, which gives you power?

Some problems can only be resolved by network analysis.

News of the Indian Mutiny had taken forty-six days to reach London in 1857, travelling at an effective speed of 3.8 miles an hour. News of the huge Nobi earthquake in Japan in 1891 took a single day, travelling at 246 miles an hour, sixty-five times faster.50.

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.

My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it – hegemony, primacy, you name it – are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

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.

The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ. It is the story at the very heart of modern history. It is perhaps the most challenging riddle historians have to solve. And we should solve it not merely to satisfy our curiosity. For it is only by identifying the true causes of Western ascendancy that we can hope to estimate with any degree of accuracy the imminence of our decline and fall.

Because of preferential attachment, most social networks are profoundly inegalitarian.

After 1500 not all roads led to Rome.