If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside. – James Buchan
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
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
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
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 A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.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