paradoxes

[arabaliozian]

Monday, August 08, 2016
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PARADOXES
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Americans: Slave owners
whose favorite slogan was
“All men are created equal.”
*
Armenians: Perennial victims and losers
who pretend to be smart.
*
Solidarity and cooperation:
Do we have words for them? –
and I don’t mean “dictionary” words
that are seldom or never used
in everyday parlance.
*
The stench of our history is so foul
that no amount of perfumed propaganda
can disguise it.
*
Anonymous: “You cannot straighten out a hunchback.”
*
We have no use for literature.
Even the most backward and ignorant Armenian
is convinced he knows better.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

IT BEARS REPEATING
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If wrong, I can be corrected. No sweat.
I speak for myself and no one else.
I have no reputation to defend and no interests to protect.
There is no harm in what I say.
Why should I be your enemy if my only crime is expressing your secret thoughts?
Don't say I don't understand you if you don't make yourself worthy of my understanding.
Why is it that the self-righteous are not always open to reason?
You cannot be right from the gutter.
Neither can you explain the world if you don't understand yourself.
Armenians!
Who takes them seriously?
Only themselves.
Who cares what they think?
No one but themselves.
Who gives a damn whether they live or die?
Not even themselves.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

As a nonbeliever I respect equally both believers and nonbelievers– both Sartre and Schweitzer (who were cousins).
Sartre, the atheist, writes in his memoirs: “I depend on people who depend on God.”
A contradiction?
Walt Whitman: “So what if I contradict myself? I contain multitudes.”
*

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

We love the truth and hate lies
or so we say and like to believe.
But truth is one and elusive
and lies are real and without number.

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

Some readers demand that I solve problems whose very existence they refuse to acknowledge.

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

As an Armenian I feel like the celebrated Arab poet who had 1000 friends & one enemy, but his friends were nowhere & his enemy everywhere.

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

THE STERILITY OF LITERATURE
***************************************
After Shaw wrote, "One fashionably dressed woman may cost the life of ten babies," did the number of fashionably dressed women go down?

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

Strange country, stranger people! They utter a
cliché or a platitude and call it a philosophy.
In a land devoid of philosophers, everyone is a
philosopher.

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

BOOK REVIEW
****************************
1001 DAYS THAT SHAPED THE WORLD.
Edited by Peter Furtado.
960 pages. New York, 2008.
************************************************
Three randomly selected days discussed in this wrist-wrenching and lavishly illustrated tome are:
“May 1, 1274 – Beatrice Portinari inspires Dante's greatest work.”
“June 4, 1913 – Suffragette xxxxxled to Death.”
“January 2, 1973 – Abortion Legalized.”
*
Armenians are not mentioned.
Turks and Kurds, yes.
Armenians. no.
So much for first nation this and first nation that. Which may suggest that our propaganda is designed to deceive us and no one else.
But that's the way it is with all propaganda regardless of race, color, and creed.
No one but Jews believe they are the Chosen People.
No one but some Aryans believed they belonged to a Superior Race.
And until very recently, no one but Southern bigots believed in the superiority of “Anglo-Saxon democracy” and in the inferiority of Jews, Blacks, and Catholics – that is to say, the rest of the mankind.
Charity, it is said, begins at home.
So does deception, alas!
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: paradoxes

Tuesday, October 04, 2016
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AS I SEE IT
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Who pays taxes in America?
Only Americans who can’t afford
competent accountants, financial advisers,
and loophole experts.
*
Only a god with a diabolical imagination
could have created man.
*
My 11th commandment:
Thou shalt not make yourself marketable.
*
Sooner or later all empires bite the dust.
It’s different with nations
of Oriental carpet dealers.
*
My critics demand love from me
because deep inside somewhere
they knew they are hateful.
#