James Buchan Quotes - Page 2

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• Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.

  James Buchan

  Character, Greed, Expansion

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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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• Were there peace and justice in the Middle East, the Arabs would no more need their tinhorn dictators than they would their corpulent princes.

  James Buchan

  Justice, Middle East, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• We generally write best of what we ourselves have seen.

  James Buchan

  Writing

  "Memory games" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. March 18, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• The world survived the fall of the Roman empire and will no doubt outlast our own so much more splendid civilisation.

  James Buchan

  Fall, Doubt, World

  "Market failures" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. May 2, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

• Losing your capital is like losing your trousers. It is a real humiliation, and one not to be soon repeated.

  James Buchan

  Real, Losing, Humiliation

  9 Copy quote

• If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.

  James Buchan

  Passion, History, Waiting

  52 Copy quote

• By pouring money and goods into devastated regions, foreign aid workers sometimes compound the disruption and debauch the survivors.

  James Buchan

  Survivor, Pouring, Sometimes

  "War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times by Linda Polman". www.theguardian.com. May 7, 2010.

  52 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Buchan

  Self Worth, Thinking, Bankers

  8 Copy quote

• Any new financial order for the world must tackle the three chief challenges of our age.

  James Buchan

  Birthday, Order, Challenges

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

• 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 it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task, and most of the cost, of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity.

  James Buchan

  Years, Tasks, Three

  "A complete waste of energy". www.theguardian.com. September 12, 2002.

  22 Copy quote

• Governments of rich countries spend some $6bn of tax money a year on disaster relief and development aid overseas, while each new earthquake, famine or tidal wave can attract 1,000 aid organisations, from the United Nations Children's Fund and Oxfam to the 'Jesus Brigades' of the American south and other charitable adventurers.

  James Buchan

  Country, Jesus, Children

  57 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  5 Copy quote

• All UK nuclear power stations should be shut down without delay.

  James Buchan

  Nuclear, Delay, Should

  "A complete waste of energy". www.theguardian.com. September 12, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

• 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 segregated every moment of the day and night.

  James Buchan

  Night, Men, Self

  "Lifting the veil". www.theguardian.com. November 12, 2004.

  16 Copy quote

• Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise.

  James Buchan

  Islam, Democracy, Liberty

  "Frozen assets" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. May 29, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• Europe and North America, we are told, are less dependent on energy-intensive heavy industry than in the 1960s and 1970s. It seems we squeeze more GDP out of a barrel of oil than in those benighted days.

  James Buchan

  Europe, Oil, Gdp

  4 Copy quote

• One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.

  James Buchan

  Country, Police, Historical

  "Khomeini's Ghost" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. April 10, 2009.

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• Soaring prices for crude oil, falling production surpluses, wild speculation in commodities, a rush into the precious metals, turmoil in the Middle East, assertive oil producers: it is 1973-74 all over again, and at dictation speed.

  James Buchan

  Fall, Oil, Middle East

  7 Copy quote

• Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka.

  James Buchan

  Suicide, War, Struggle

  "A history of suicide killers" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. September 17, 2001.

  16 Copy quote

• The aircraft that blew up the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington conveyed several messages to the world, of which one of the least remarked is this: the Muslims of the world are suffering.

  James Buchan

  New York, Suffering, World

  4 Copy quote

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