The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

- Niall Ferguson

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

- Niall Ferguson

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

- Niall Ferguson

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 o…

- Niall Ferguson

If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely to join the resistance.

- Niall Ferguson

It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Ch…

- 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 b…

- Niall Ferguson

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

- Niall Ferguson

All empires have depended on local legitimacy and local collaboration; they are not based primarily on coercion. An imperial rule that relies wholly …

- Niall Ferguson