Quotes by James Buchan - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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Ever since the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Muslim world has been in slow decline relative to the west. With Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the creeping British annexation of Muslim India, that decline took on a malign aspect.
James Buchan / Novelist
Aspect
Baghdad
British
Decline
Destruction
Egypt
Invasion
Muslim World
Relative
West
World
Creeping
Malign
Muslim
Slow
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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 / Novelist
Banking
Heart
Insecure
Strategy
Suicidal
Aid
Banks
Rest
Loans
Lock
Redeem
Reward
Volatile
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When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register (NAR), which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury "the modern Domesday Book".
James Buchan / Novelist
Book
London
Modern
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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 / Novelist
Age
Abolish
Antiquity
Commerce
Famine
Firsts
Forgotten
Middle Ages
Modern Times
Understood
Years
Ages
Cycle
Feast
Identified
Reminder
Such A Thing
Suddenly
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To give money to a woman - and here I must speak as a man - is to deny her special quality, her irreplaceability, and reduce her unique amiability to a commodity. Money takes away her name, while transforming her lover into a nameless customer of a market of appetites.
James Buchan / Novelist
Men
Commodity
Deny
Names
Transforming
Unique
Appetites
Lover
Customer
Reduce
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Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born revolutionary who is believed by most Arab and Iranian observers to be the inspiration of the attacks in New York and Washington, is the best known of the Islamic militants to have emerged in the past 20 years and the least difficult to fathom.
James Buchan / Novelist
New York
Fathom
Inspiration
Iranian
Islamic
Observers
Revolutionary
Arab
Attacks
Believed
Bin
Washington
Emerged
In The Past
Least
York
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Even before he came to power in 1997, Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash in and cash out, to a more commercial system that took notice of the public property the departments were using. This system is known as resource accounting.
James Buchan / Novelist
Accounting
Cash
Parliament
Simple
Commercial
Departments
Gordon
Notice
Promised
Resource
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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 / Novelist
Class
Devil
Particular
Riddle
Security
Today
Classes
Collapsing
Effect
Entire
Establish
Exchanges
Prices
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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 / Novelist
Baffled
Belief
Cities
Existence
Fashion
Police
Provision
Reality
Complex
Distinguish
Expert
Insulated
Neither
Nor
Sources
Spectacle
Systems
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The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation.
James Buchan / Novelist
Men
Arabia
Country
Dog
Female
Free Press
Novel
Population
Prominence
Saudi Arabia
This Generation
Great Where World
Great World Free
Rise
Forms
Literate
Press
Recent
Saudi
Styles
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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 / Novelist
Authenticity
British
Country
Diaries
Documents
Files
Historical
Iranian
Letters
Police
Questionable
Reports
Revolution
Secret
Video
Explosion
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Unlike despotisms, modern democracies are not supposed promiscuously to accumulate property and then charge their taxpayers to maintain it. But that is what they do. Governments are always trying to extend their responsibilities and their estates, and it is very hard for parliaments to reign them in.
James Buchan / Novelist
Estates
Reign
Accumulate
Charge
Extend
Governments
Unlike
Maintain
Responsibilities
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Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource, and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science, environmental management, government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic.
James Buchan / Novelist
Optimistic
Environmental
Government
Convenience
Diplomacy
Human Beings
Management
Mere
Numbers
Align
Alliance
Economical
Regulate
Resource
Somehow
Suggest
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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 / Novelist
Allowing
Cities
Earth
Fuel
Millions
People
Petroleum
Plenty
Population
Refined
Toil
Life Great World
Began
Centuries
Feed
Corner
Freed
Gave
Hundreds
Millions Of People
Themselves
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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 / Novelist
Bloody
Bombers
Brutal
Desperate
East
Gaza
Giving
Middle East
Prestige
Suicide
Symbolic
Victory
West
Bin
Current
Distant
Regarded
Romantics
Victories
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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 / Novelist
Jesus
Charitable
Children
Country
Development
Disaster
Famine
Fund
Nations
Oxfam
Relief
Rich
Rich Countries
United Nations
Wave
Tax
Adventurers
Aid
Attract
Brigade
Countries
Each
Earthquake
Governments
Spend
Organisations
Overseas
Tax Money
Tidal
While
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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 / Novelist
Borrowing
Ceo
Cost
Crash
Credit
Distance
Driven
Eye
Grief
Interruptions
Universe
Usual
Rise
Boom
Cheap
Followed
Pattern
Subject
Viewed
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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 / Novelist
Birthday
Running
Smile
Average
Century
Crude
Crude Oil
Industry
Inflation
Oil
Oil Companies
Petroleum
Selling
Selling More
Western
Zenith
Adjusted
Barrel
Companies
Large
Liquidation
Passed
Signs
Thus
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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 / Novelist
Future
Cost
Dear
Electricity
Eternity
Generations
Half Way
Lunatic
Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Plutonium
Safe
Stations
Tasks
Three
Waste
Years
Been
Leave
Lethal
Future Generations
Making
Polluted
Produced
Radioactive
Sites
Task
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