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.
Good Great Greed

About This Quote

About Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson was a contemporary Scottish historian. Sir Niall Campbell Ferguson is a British-American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, New York University, a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. Read more on Wikipedia →

More 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 peop...”
— Niall Ferguson
humanitarian-intervention interventionism isolationism noninterventionism

“So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulner...”
— Niall Ferguson
democracy freedom liberalism liberty

“After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism”
— Niall Ferguson
art culture influence propaganda

“What makes a civilization real to its inhabitants, in the end, is not just the splendid edifices at it centre, nor even the smooth functioning of the institutions they house. At its core, a civiliz...”
— Niall Ferguson
culture education heritage

“The Japanese had no idea what elements of Western culture and institutions where the crucial ones, so they ended up copying everything, from western clothes and hair styles to the European practice...”
— Niall Ferguson
culture distinction originality

“There can be no understanding without that sympathy which puts us, through the imagination, and (another's) situation.”
— Niall Ferguson
imagination sympathy thinking
View all quotes by Niall Ferguson →

Related Quotes

“Justice is the only worship.Love is the only priest.Ignorance is the only slavery.Happiness is the only good.The time to be happy is now,The place to be happy is here,The way to be happy is to make...”
— Robert G. Ingersoll
good happiness how-to-be-happy morality

“Be a good human.”
— Tom Giaquinto, Be A Good Human
good happiness happy human

“Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.”
— Madeleine L'Engle
good happiness pleasure

“A cheap writer has an expensive thoughts.”
— J. Limbu
great inspirational-quotes mind thoughts

“It's rewarding if you have an opportunity to do something or to serve, you always give in your best. The world has changed, yes! But that shouldn't make you behave otherwise to the detriment of you...”
— Chidiebere Prosper Agbugba
great honesty inspirational-quotes motivation

“The people of great value are the people who have a noble inner man”
— Sunday Adelaja
great inner man noble

“You have succeeded in life when all you really WANT is only what you really NEED.”
— Vernon Howard
greed life success

“There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.”
— Maya Angelou
greed life

“I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I l...”
— C. JoyBell C.
greed human-nature humanism humanity