Quotes by Niall Ferguson

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

“Who killed Christianity in Europe? Was it, as (Max) Weber himself predicted, that the spirit of capitalism was bound to destroy the Protestant ethic parents, as materialism corrupted the original a...”

“Institutions or products of culture. But they formalize a set of norms.”

“The First World War was at once piteous, in the poet's sense, and 'a pity'. It was something worse than a tragedy, which is ultimately something we are taught by the theatre to regard as unavoidabl...”

“Even small numbers of evangelical missionaries can achieve a good deal, furnished as they are with substantial funds from congregations at home.”

“For much (though certainly, as we shall see, not all) of its history, the British Empire acted as an agency for imposing free markets, the rule of law, investor protection and relatively incorrupt ...”

“The difficulty with the achievements of the empire is that they are much more likely to be taken for granted than the sins of the empire.”

“The British Empire was the nearest thing there has ever been to a world government. Yet its mode of operation was a triumph of minimalism.”

“For better, for worse – fair and foul – the world we know today is in large measure the product of Britain’s age of Empire. The question is not whether British imperialism was without a blemish. It...”

“The empire had begun with the stealing of gold; it progressed with the cultivation of sugar.”

“The struggle for world mastery between Britain and France would rage on with only brief respite until 1815. But the Seven Years War decided one thing irrevocably. India would be British, not French...”

“Once pirates, then traders, the British were now the rulers of millions of people overseas – and not just in India. Thanks to a combination of naval and financial muscle they had become the winners...”

“In 1615 the British Isles had been an economically unremarkable, politically fractious and strategically second-class entity. Two hundred years later Great Britain had acquired the largest empire t...”

“Between the early 1600s and the 1950s, more than 20 million people left the British Isles to begin new lives across the seas. Only a minority ever returned. No other country in the world came close...”

“This, then, was the combination that made New England flourish: Puritanism plus the profit motive.”

“‘Amazing Grace’ is the supreme hymn of Evangelical redemption….It is therefore tempting to imagine John Newton suddenly seeing the light about slavery and turning away from his wicked profession to...”

“It was the moment when the British ideal of liberty bit back. It was the moment when the British Empire began to tear itself apart. On the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts, British redcoat...”

“In all, around 100,000 Loyalists left the new United States bound for Canada, England or the West Indies. It has sometimes been argued that in gaining Canada in the Seven Years War, Britain had und...”

“With its weird red earth and its alien flora and fauna – the eucalyptus trees and kangaroos – Australia was the eighteenth-century equivalent of Mars. This helps explain why the first official resp...”

“The great paradox of Australian history is that what started out as a colony populated by people whom Britain had thrown out proved to be so loyal to the British Empire for so long. America had beg...”