James Buchan Quotes

65 quotes in 1317 categories

• Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise.
• A century ago, petroleum - what we call oil - was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as…
• Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.
• Economists, like royal children, are not punished for their errors.
• Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop.
• Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to…
• Saudi Arabia operates according to the belief that God made young men and women so utterly and completely without self-control that they must be physically…
• Profits in business always depend on the rate of interest: the higher the interest, the higher the rate of profit required.
• Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who…
• All UK nuclear power stations should be shut down without delay.
• Any new financial order for the world must tackle the three chief challenges of our age.
• By pouring money and goods into devastated regions, foreign aid workers sometimes compound the disruption and debauch the survivors.
• If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.
• Losing your capital is like losing your trousers. It is a real humiliation, and one not to be soon repeated.
• Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue.
• The world survived the fall of the Roman empire and will no doubt outlast our own so much more splendid civilisation.
• We generally write best of what we ourselves have seen.
• Were there peace and justice in the Middle East, the Arabs would no more need their tinhorn dictators than they would their corpulent princes.
• 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 to explain themselves.
• For 50 years, nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear…

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