#de

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 A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.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

#awash #been #british #consequences #consular

I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was... nothingness. ↗

— Frances Farmer

#became #god #him #i #less

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. ↗

— Thomas Carlyle

#find #fortune #inequality #man #perhaps

Rarely in modern times has there been such a revolution in commercial sentiment as occurred in 2008, or such a display in government and business of panic and helplessness. ↗

— James Buchan

#business #commercial #display #government #helplessness

Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka. ↗

— James Buchan

#bombings #during #east #europe #exclusive

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. ↗

— Thomas Carlyle

#after #become #books #collection #depends

I was watching TV and saw people with masks, weapons, and grenades. I thought, Is that really possible? Could we be here yet again? And go into civil war one more time? ↗

— Nadine Labaki

#civil #civil war #could #go #grenades

The great disadvantage of getting older is to be obliged to relive the salient economic events of one's youth, with nothing learned and nothing forgotten. ↗

— James Buchan

#economic #events #forgotten #getting #getting older

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

#antiquity #commerce #cycle #famine #feast

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

#adjusted #age #average #barrel #century