James Buchan Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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

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• 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 A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.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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• 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.

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• For all their current prestige, Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories, however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.

  James Buchan

  Suicide, Giving, Victory

  "Inside the mind of a terrorist". www.theguardian.com. September 16, 2001.

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• Cause and effect, the riddle of all history, is a particular devil in financial history; and never more so than today, where entire classes of security are collapsing not on public exchanges and stock-tickers but because there are no markets to establish prices this side of nothing.

  James Buchan

  Class, Devil, Today

  "Greed and amnesia: the devils in financial history". www.theguardian.com. October 10, 2008.

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• One of the admirable features of British novelists is that they have no scruple about setting their stories in foreign settings with wholly foreign personnel.

  James Buchan

  Novelists, Stories, Scruples

  "Sold, for two truckloads of oranges" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. February 11, 2006.

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• There are signs that the age of petroleum has passed its zenith. Adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude oil now sells for three times its long-run average. The large western oil companies, which cartellised the industry for much of the 20th century, are now selling more oil than they find, and are thus in the throes of liquidation.

  James Buchan

  Birthday, Running, Average

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• Viewed from a distance, or through the eye of the All-Knowing CEO of the Universe, the crash of 2008 followed the usual pattern. A long-lived boom driven by cheap credit, going back as far as 1982 (though subject to interruptions in the mid-1980s and 1990s, and in 2001), came to grief because of a rise in the cost of borrowing money.

  James Buchan

  Distance, Grief, Eye

  7 Copy quote

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