Niall Ferguson Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Niall Ferguson:

I'm over-industrious, so I don't feel quite such a deviant in America as I did in England.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

Niall Ferguson

Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.

Niall Ferguson

Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing.

Niall Ferguson

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

Something that's seldom appreciated about me is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I'm on the side of the bourgeoisie.

Niall Ferguson

I was never a very convincing social conservative, and always avoided associating myself with that part of the broader conservative movement.

Niall Ferguson

My fundamental tenets are concerned with freedom of the individual; the market isn't perfect, but it's the best available way of allocating resources.

Niall Ferguson

Through pure accident of birth, I've managed to stay relatively youthful.

Niall Ferguson

I can't think of anything I would rather do with my money than buy my children the best possible education.

Niall Ferguson

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

Niall Ferguson

If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx's doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I'm rightwing.

Niall Ferguson

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.

Niall Ferguson

Oral history is a recipe for complete misrepresentation because almost no one tells the truth, even when they intend to.

Niall Ferguson

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

Niall Ferguson

President Obama's biggest weakness is weakness.

Niall Ferguson

I'm over-industrious, so I don't feel quite such a deviant in America as I did in England.

Niall Ferguson

Risk models are a substitute for historical knowledge, because they tend to work with just three years' worth of data. But three years is not a long time in financial history.

Niall Ferguson

The debate that I'm interested in having is with seriously smart people about how we design institutions in the 21st century that will genuinely address problems of poverty and educational underachievement.

Niall Ferguson

I have three kids in Britain, and I am there at least once a month.

Niall Ferguson

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

Niall Ferguson

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.

Niall Ferguson