Niall Ferguson Quotes
Being a minority with a common sense of beliefs can be a great economic advantage in that they have a greater sense of trust.
Niall Ferguson, Historian, Interview, C-SPAN After Words, December 10, 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The proverb advises that better than having money is having the friends and contacts with the people who have a lot of money as you can then get more. This is even an adage in modern democratic political campaign fundraising.
There are large areas of life and society in which all Arabs—especially in Saudi Arabia are expected to behave, believe, and think in certain ways. The modern Islamic religion governs behavior of all kinds and is very prescriptive. Everyone is expected to take it literally and behave accordingly. Individualism and even creativity except in prescribed areas is even regarded as sinful. Islam was not always such, and ironically when Christianity was in its Dark Ages and was even worse for the individual than Arab Islam today, the Muslims celebrated intellectual creativity and exploration of all ideas including those of the West. However, in the 12th century there was a “closing”—a narrowing of allowable Islamic thinking, and since then, Islamic people have had great difficulty with change or modernity. Not all Muslim nations are equally rigid but the Arabs are at the extreme among Islamic counties.
Niall Campbell Ferguson is a Scottish historian and the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics and New York University, visiting professor at New College of the Humanities and senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.
