Life without oil, in fact, would be so different that it is frightening to contemplate. We are addicted, and it is no comfortable addiction.

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

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.

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.

Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop.

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

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