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" What's so seductive about the efficient markets hypothesis is that it applies nine years out of ten. A lot of the time it works. But when it stops working, you blow up. "
Niall Ferguson
Years
Up
Time
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" 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. "
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" I was never a very convincing social conservative, and always avoided associating myself with that part of the broader conservative movement. "
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Never
" There aren't many people who really put their life on the line for human freedom. "
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Who
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" In general, I have felt more at home in the U.S. than I ever felt in England. "
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" As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet. "
Niall Ferguson
Encourage
You
Teacher
" The whole point about historians is that we are really communing with the dead. It's very restful - because you read. There's some sociopathic problem that makes me prefer it to human interaction. "
Niall Ferguson
Human
You
Dead
" 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. "
Niall Ferguson
Retirement
Success
Time
" As a financial historian, I was quite isolated in Oxford - British historians are supposed to write about kings - so the quality of intellectual life in my field is much higher at Harvard. The students work harder there. "
Niall Ferguson
Quality
Life
Kings
" It's not surprising so many people end up with credit-card debts. Saving for your retirement and buying a house are difficult things, and we don't educate people about them at all. "
Niall Ferguson
Things
End
House
" I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one. "
Niall Ferguson
Liberal
19th-Century
Even
" Oral history is a recipe for complete misrepresentation because almost no one tells the truth, even when they intend to. "
Niall Ferguson
Recipe
Almost
Because
" 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
Life
Freedom
People
" I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "
Niall Ferguson
Brother
Big
Conversation
" 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
Me
Looking
Intelligent
" 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
Friends
Work
Think
" The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ. "
Niall Ferguson
Half
Rise
West
" 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. "
Niall Ferguson
Think
History
Management
" 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
Resources
Best
Way
" One of the main arguments that I make in my new book, 'The Great Degeneration,' is that the rule of law in the U.S. is becoming the rule of lawyers. "
Niall Ferguson
Law
Lawyers
Great
" I can't think of anything I would rather do with my money than buy my children the best possible education. "
Niall Ferguson
Money
Children
Best
" If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx's doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I'm rightwing. "
Niall Ferguson
Humanity
Being
Thinking
" 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
Great
Appreciated
Sympathy
" President Obama's biggest weakness is weakness. "
Niall Ferguson
President
Biggest
Weakness
" 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
Psychology
Right
Risk
" I have three kids in Britain, and I am there at least once a month. "
Niall Ferguson
Month
Kids
Three
" It's great to see countries like China and India lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by essentially copying Western ways of doing things. "
Niall Ferguson
India
Great
People
" 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
Things
Understood
Never
" Only in England would 'professor gets divorced and remarried' be a story. "
Niall Ferguson
England
Professor
Story
" 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
Knowledge
Long
Time
" When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution. "
Niall Ferguson
First
Public
Oxford