James Buchan Quotes

Economists, like royal children, are not punished for their errors.

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.

Almost all novels are improved by cutting from the top. On their first pages, authors parade those favourite effects which disgust the impartial reader.

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

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

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

In rising financial markets, the world is forever new. The bull or optimist has no eyes for past or present, but only for the future, where streams of revenue play in his imagination.

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.

What holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt to have defended Arab interests against the world. That, in the end, is more important than what they wear on their head.

A century ago, petroleum - what we call oil - was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as water.

The dividing line between wish and need was never clear.