Quote

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

James Buchan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Buchan
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: June 11
Journalist
Novelist
James Ernest Buchan
Hon. James Ernest Buchan
Call
Petroleum
Water
Commodity
Today
Obscure
Human
Vital
Humans
Oil
Century
Existence
Almost

More quotes by James Buchan

Image
Because bankers measure their self-worth in money, and pay themselves a lot of it, they think they're fine fellows and don't need to explain themselves.
James Buchan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
James Buchan
Image
Life without oil, in fact, would be so different that it is frightening to contemplate. We are addicted, and it is no comfortable addiction.
James Buchan
Image
The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.
James Buchan
Image
Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop.
James Buchan
Image
The dividing line between wish and need was never clear.
James Buchan
Image
The world survived the fall of the Roman empire and will no doubt outlast our own so much more splendid civilisation.
James Buchan
Image
Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.
James Buchan
Image
We read too much Shakespeare at school, and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama, in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits, was promised and has earned.
James Buchan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.
James Buchan
Image
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
Image
Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue.
James Buchan
Image
There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.
James Buchan
Image
Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise.
James Buchan
Image
The aircraft that blew up the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington conveyed several messages to the world, of which one of the least remarked is this: the Muslims of the world are suffering.
James Buchan