James Buchan Quotes - Page 3

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• At the heart of banking is a suicidal strategy. Banks take money from the public or each other on call, skim it for their own reward and then lock the rest up in volatile, insecure and illiquid loans that at times they cannot redeem without public aid.

  James Buchan

  Heart, Suicidal, Insecure

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• Whatever else it was, Adolf Hitler's short-lived regime was also a colossal industrial process by which the wealth and productive power of much of Europe was wrenched from its normal purposes and converted into a machine for killing.

  James Buchan

  Europe, Purpose, Machines

  "Hitler's gold". www.theguardian.com. August 11, 2006.

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• The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce, first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages, was not suddenly abolished in modern times.

  James Buchan

  Years, Age, Firsts

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• The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

  James Buchan

  Philosophy, Political, Bags

  "Market failures". www.theguardian.com. May 2, 2008.

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• My belief, for what it is worth, is that city dwellers cannot understand the world. Insulated from reality by complex and expert systems of provision and police, baffled by fashion and spectacle, city dwellers can distinguish neither the sources of their existence nor the consequences.

  James Buchan

  Fashion, Reality, Cities

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• Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.

  James Buchan

  Doe, Purpose, Warning

  "The role of snow" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. September 22, 2007.

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• The use of refined petroleum as fuel, which began in the 1850s, freed hundreds of millions of people from the toil of centuries, gave hundreds of millions more a life of ease and plenty, and, by allowing great cities to feed themselves from every corner of the world, multiplied the population of the earth fivefold.

  James Buchan

  Cities, People, Toil

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• The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world.

  James Buchan

  Military, Technology, World

  "The last great heresy" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. July 5, 2002.

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• There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.

  James Buchan

  Ignorance, Self, Enlightenment

  "Freedoms in the balance" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. February 6, 2006.

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