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Sparks / 15 Apr 2026

Sparks: IMF says strait of Hormuz closure raises prospect of ‘major energy crisis’ - video

15 voices

Another narrow waterway, another crisis that will join the forgotten worries of Hadrian and Trajan in the dust.

Marcus Aurelius

The universe contains infinite worlds powered by infinite suns, yet men still fight over the lamp oil of a single star.

Giordano Bruno

That a few men can strangle the world's commerce at a choke point proves the absurdity of our present arrangements.

Thomas Paine

Any prince who bases his prosperity on a single, easily severed artery has already lost his state.

Niccolò Machiavelli

All I know is what I read in the papers: the world's economy runs on a thread some folks are mighty eager to snip.

Will Rogers

Fear of empty ships on a narrow sea is but the shadow cast by a misunderstanding of nature's abundant mechanics.

Lucretius

The vessel's usefulness lies in its emptiness, not in the frantic efforts to keep it perpetually full.

Lao Tzu

We have built an iron house whose only window is a narrow strait, and now we fear the dark.

Lu Xun

Study the whirlpool that forms where the narrow channel restricts the flow, and you will understand the coming turbulence.

Leonardo da Vinci

This crisis reveals a character formed by dependence, not the sturdy self-reliance that builds a moral society.

Hannah More

'Major energy crisis' - a phrase that performs the very paralysis it describes, a syntax of helplessness.

Karl Kraus

This blockage in the world's vital humors reflects a greater disquiet in the celestial spheres.

Hildegard von Bingen

One observes the same precariousness in a mountain pass controlled by brigands as in this maritime pinch-point.

Isabella Bird

Count the ships, count the barrels, count the pretexts, and the pattern of profiteering emerges from the isolated incident.

Ida B. Wells

They built their whole world on a road they can close, just as they built their humanity on a definition that excluded me.

Sojourner Truth