143 Quotes by Niall Ferguson

No one can know the future, least of all, a historian, whose business is the past.

-- kulttuurien kamppailu Huntingtonin merkityksessä tuntuu edelleen kaukaiselta mahdollisuudelta. Pikemminkin näemme samankaltaisen siirroksen, joka 500 viime vuoden mittaan päättyi miltei aina lännen eduksi. Yksi sivilisaatio heikkenee, toinen vahvistuu. Ratkaiseva kysymys ei ole, ryhtyvätkö ne taistelemaan, vaan heilahtaako heikompi heikkoudesta suoranaiseen kaaokseen.

Sivilisaation ydin ovat tekstit, jotka sen kouluissa opetetaan, jotka sen oppilaat oppivat ja jotka muistetaan koettelemusten aikana.

The real point of me isn't that I'm good looking. It's that I'm clever. I've got a brain! I would rather be called a highly intelligent historian than a gorgeous pouting one.

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

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 became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

I think the rise of quantitative econometrics and a highly mathematical approach to risk management was the obverse of a decline in interest in financial history.

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 what it is to be human, and one does better work if one has a circle of friends that is active.