“In modern society, where most people live in cities, and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency – money – the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished.”
— James Buchan
Author: James Buchan
Category: society
Tags: society, James Buchan
“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.”
— James Buchan
Author: James Buchan
Category: power
Tags: power, James Buchan
“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
Author: James Buchan
Category: power
Tags: power, James Buchan
“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
Author: James Buchan
Category: future
Tags: future, James Buchan
“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
Author: James Buchan
Category: women
Tags: women, James Buchan
“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
Author: James Buchan
Category: history
Tags: history, James Buchan
“Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.”
— James Buchan
Author: James Buchan
Category: poetry
Tags: poetry, James Buchan
“All UK nuclear power stations should be shut down without delay.”
— James Buchan
Author: James Buchan
Category: power
Tags: power, James Buchan
“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
Author: James Buchan
Category: government
Tags: government, James Buchan
“If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.”
— James Buchan
Author: James Buchan
Category: history
Tags: history, James Buchan
“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
Author: James Buchan
Category: peace
Tags: peace, James Buchan