The House of Rothschild, Vol 1 Quotes

“All rapidly accumulated wealth is either the result of luck or discovery, or the result of a legalised theft.”
― Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848

“Richelieu, Robespierre and Rothschild are for me three terroristic names, and they signify the gradual annihilation of the old aristocracy. Richelieu, Robespierre and Rothschild are Europe’s three most fearful levellers. Richelieu destroyed the sovereignty of the feudal nobility, and subjected it to that royal despotism, which either relegated it to court service, or let it rot in bumpkin-like inactivity in the provinces. Robespierre decapitated this subjugated and idle nobility. But the land remained, and its new master, the new landowner, quickly became another aristocrat just like his predecessor, whose pretensions he continued under another name. Then came Rothschild and destroyed the predominance of land, by raising the system of state bonds to supreme power, thereby mobilising property and income and at the same time endowing money with the previous privileges of the land. He thereby created a new aristocracy, it is true, but this, resting as it does on the most unreliable of elements, on money, can never play as enduringly regressive a role as the former aristocracy, which was rooted in the land, in the earth itself.”
― Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848

“Rothschild . . . destroyed the predominance of land, by raising the system of state bonds to supreme power, thereby mobilising property and income and at the same time endowing money with the previous privileges of the land. He thereby created a new aristocracy, it is true, but this, resting as it does on the most unreliable of elements, on money, can never play as enduringly regressive a role as the former aristocracy, which was rooted in the land, in the earth itself.”
― Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848

“August Belmont was widely attacked in the North during the American Civil War because he favoured a negotiated peace with the South and supported General George McClellan’s nom ination as Democrat candidate in 1864.”
― Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848

“they sought, from their earliest days, to use their financial leverage over individual states to improve the legal and political position of the Jews living there.”
― Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848

“A project such as this depends heavily on the expertise and toil of archivists and librarians.”
― Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: Volume 1: Money's Prophets: 1798-1848