All UK nuclear power stations should be shut down without delay. — James Buchan Climate Copy Share Image
If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside. — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Losing your capital is like losing your trousers. It is a real humiliation, and one not to be soon repeated. — James Buchan Capital Copy Share Image
Economists, like royal children, are not punished for their errors. — James Buchan Children Copy Share Image
Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop. — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise. — James Buchan Democracy Copy Share Image
Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue. — James Buchan Arabia Copy Share Image
In modern society, where most people live in cities, and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits, the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637,… — James Buchan Bears Copy Share Image
Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice. — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Life without oil, in fact, would be so different that it is frightening to contemplate. We are addicted, and it is no… — James Buchan Addiction Copy Share Image
The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
The great disadvantage of getting older is to be obliged to relive the salient economic events of one's youth, with nothing learned… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
The world survived the fall of the Roman empire and will no doubt outlast our own so much more splendid civilisation. — James Buchan Civilisation Copy Share Image
By pouring money and goods into devastated regions, foreign aid workers sometimes compound the disruption and debauch the survivors. — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Even before he came to power in 1997, Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
What holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
For 50 years, nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and… — James Buchan Bombs Copy Share Image
The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy.… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
The use of refined petroleum as fuel, which began in the 1850s, freed hundreds of millions of people from the toil of… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Last chances in the Middle East have been two a dirham since the 1950s. Each year the enmities are more profound, the… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Cause and effect, the riddle of all history, is a particular devil in financial history; and never more so than today, where… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Any new financial order for the world must tackle the three chief challenges of our age. — James Buchan Age Copy Share Image
Profits in business always depend on the rate of interest: the higher the interest, the higher the rate of profit required. — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Were there peace and justice in the Middle East, the Arabs would no more need their tinhorn dictators than they would their… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Almost all novels are improved by cutting from the top. On their first pages, authors parade those favourite effects which disgust the… — James Buchan Books Copy Share Image
Because bankers measure their self-worth in money, and pay themselves a lot of it, they think they're fine fellows and don't need… — James Buchan Bankers Copy Share Image
Europe and North America, we are told, are less dependent on energy-intensive heavy industry than in the 1960s and 1970s. It seems… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Rarely in modern times has there been such a revolution in commercial sentiment as occurred in 2008, or such a display in… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
A century ago, petroleum - what we call oil - was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Where consumption is both conspicuous and competitive, humanity will never run out of new wishes. All the while, industry creates new desires… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Saudi Arabia operates according to the belief that God made young men and women so utterly and completely without self-control that they… — James Buchan Arabia Copy Share Image
One of the admirable features of British novelists is that they have no scruple about setting their stories in foreign settings with… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
The theory of permanent Muslim-Christian enmity, though it flourishes in the caves of Tora Bora and parts of the American academy, was… — James Buchan Academy Copy Share Image
Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess… — James Buchan Body Copy Share Image
In rising financial markets, the world is forever new. The bull or optimist has no eyes for past or present, but only… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
In falling markets, there is nothing that has not happened before. The bear or pessimist sees only the past, which imprisons the… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
