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
If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside. — James Buchan Copy Share Image
All UK nuclear power stations should be shut down without delay. — James Buchan Climate 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
Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue. — James Buchan Arabia Copy Share Image
Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise. — James Buchan Democracy 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 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
By pouring money and goods into devastated regions, foreign aid workers sometimes compound the disruption and debauch the survivors. — 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
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
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
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
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
We read too much Shakespeare at school, and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama, in which an impatient crown prince frets… — James Buchan Crown Copy Share Image
Soaring prices for crude oil, falling production surpluses, wild speculation in commodities, a rush into the precious metals, turmoil in the Middle… — James Buchan Assertive Copy Share Image
Governments of rich countries spend some $6bn of tax money a year on disaster relief and development aid overseas, while each new… — James Buchan Adventurer Copy Share Image
Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource, and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow… — James Buchan Alliances Copy Share Image
The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a… — James Buchan Arabia Copy Share Image
Unlike despotisms, modern democracies are not supposed promiscuously to accumulate property and then charge their taxpayers to maintain it. But that is… — 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
At the heart of banking is a suicidal strategy. Banks take money from the public or each other on call, skim it… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop. — 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
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
The aircraft that blew up the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington conveyed several messages to the… — James Buchan Copy Share Image
Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be… — James Buchan Afghanistan 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
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
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
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
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
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
