The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ.

The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.

Empires, essentially, create order. In their absence, you don't end up with lots of happy, little nation-states full of people sitting around campfires singing John Lennon's "Imagine." What you end up with is civil war, anarchy.

When bond prices fall, interest rates soar, with painful consequences for all borrowers.

In the financial sector, those whom the gods want to destroy they first teach math.

I think the condition of imperial denial is a handicap because if you do not recognize that you are essentially performing the functions of an empire, you are incapable of learning from the mistakes of past empires.

Today, the average Korean works a thousand hours more a year than the average German. A thousand. ... That is the end of the Great Divergence.