Niall Ferguson Quotes

With the rise of America, the global balance of power shifted away from the old European powers.

Power is the true reserve currency in international affairs.

So every day I'm mindful as I watch the Bush crowd extend their sway into policies of every imaginable variety, and over almost every square foot of earth, that the control of the American state is a matter of urgency.

The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come.

World power is fleeting. Nations rise and fall.

Imperialist enterprise draws political consequences.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t consider ourselves an empire. Others see us as impinging on their lives, their way of life.

Unilateralism will lead to the decline of American Power.

Look at the history of empires. They come and they go. They ebb and they flow.

We live in the age of the American empire.

Existing great powers are always nervous when there is a new emerging power

In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.

The ancients, by their system of colonization, made themselves friends all over the known world; the moderns have sought to make subjects, and therefore have made enemies.

The war is going to end because we're gonna have such a political and financial havoc here with the devaluation of our dollar, because we just can't keep affording it. This is usually how empires end, by spending too much money maintaining their empire. We're in 130 countries, we have 700 bases around the world, and it's going to come to an end. I want it to come to an end more gracefully and peacefully, follow the constitution, and follow a more sensible foreign policy.

We were quite naïve about the use of American power.

We have to really get used to the fact that there is more than one center in the world politics, that the unipolar world never succeeded, that there are more growing, emerging, economic, financial powers…

We've built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort.

One of the immutable patterns of history is the rise and fall of great powers. Those that survive are the ones that adapt as the world changes.

For when we talk about the spreading power and influence of globalization, aren't we really referring to the spreading economic and military might of the US?

So long as there is imperialism in the world, a permanent peace is impossible.

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.

We all know what is meant by the term 'international community,' don't we? It's the West, of course, nothing more, nothing less. Using the term 'international community' is a way of dignifying the West, of globalising it, of making it sound more respectable, more neutral and high-faluting.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.