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Niall Ferguson Quotes


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Quotes by Niall Ferguson

Showing 1-10 of 37 Quotes by 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

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The great thing about behavioural psychology and economics is that they help us to see that there are actually pretty good reasons why human beings swing from greed to fear, and why we're not really calculating machines or utility-maximisers.

~Niall Ferguson

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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

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There aren't many people who really put their life on the line for human freedom.

~Niall Ferguson

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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

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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

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We historians are increasingly using experimental psychology to understand the way we act. It is becoming very clear that our ability to evaluate risk is hedged by all sorts of cognitive biases. It's a miracle that we get anything right.

~Niall Ferguson

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

~Niall Ferguson

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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

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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

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Historian

Born: April 18th, 1964

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