# Quote — Niall Ferguson, Empire

> It was the moment when the British ideal of liberty bit back. It was the moment when the British Empire began to tear itself apart. On the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts, British redcoats exchanged fire for the first time with armed American colonists. It was 19 April 1775.

- Author: [Niall Ferguson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson.md)
- Book: [Empire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire.md)
- Page: 88
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson#Empire:_How_Britain_Made_the_Modern_World_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/it-was-the

## More from this book

> Finally, although Anglophone economic and political liberalism remains the most alluring of the world’s cultures, it continues to face, as it has since the Iranian revolution, a serious threat from Islamic fundamentalism.

p. 364 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/finally-although-anglophone.md)

> The familiar rationale of white rule in Africa was that it conferred the benefits of civilization. The war made a mockery of that claim.

p. 301 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/the-familiar-rationale.md)

> In 1940, under Churchill’s inspired, indomitable, incomparable leadership, the Empire had stood alone against the truly evil imperialism of Hitler. Even if it did not last for the thousand years that Churchill hopefully suggested it might, this was indeed the British Empire’s 'finest hour'.
>
> Yet what made it so fine, so authentically noble, was that the Empire’s victory could only ever have been Pyrrhic. In the end, the British sacrificed her Empire to stop the Germans, Japanese and Italians from keeping theirs. Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire’s other sins?

p. 355 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/in-1940-under.md)