notes and comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 7, 2010
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QUOTATIONS
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Since I spend most of my time reading, the most enjoyable moments in my daily existence are quotable lines.
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BALZAC
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“The fate of the house hangs on the wedding night.”
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“Nature makes only dull animals; we owe the fool to society.”
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“Love and hatred are feelings that feed on themselves, but of the two, hatred has a longer lifespan.”
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KURT VONNEGUT
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“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”
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DEFINITIONS FROM
A DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY
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“Generally speaking megalomania is a reaction to failure. The megalomaniac represents himself as he would like to be but as he is not. Megalomania may also be a symptom of the decline of one’s critical faculties.”
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On dogmatism:
“It stands in direct contradiction to criticism, skepticism, empiricism, and realism.
It fosters intolerance and fanaticism.”
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ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
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“Who is a Zek’s [an inmate of the Gulag]] worst enemy? Another Zek.”
Zeks too, I thought.
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EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
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“And he whose soul is flat – the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.”
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MARILYN MONROE
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"Khruschev looked at me the way a man looks on a woman."
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

Here ya go

allow me to share a professional secret with you.
the greatest insult that a reader can deliver to a writer
is to ignore him.
i once stumbled into an armenian forum
that was a vipers' nest of hostile readers
who treated me like a leper.
but ever since i shared this secret with them,
i have been left alone.
peace is wonderful!

if anything this passage is the opposite of arrogance
since i admit to being repellent to some readers.

[levon]

Re: elegy

if anything this passage is the opposite of arrogance
since i admit to being repellent to some readers.

That's your view. In my view, the passage expresses an arrogant attitude, but attempts to hide it by attempting to display a humble position. Which is just as I said in my original comment.

But, seriously, I don't see why you take offense to it.

[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 8, 2010
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SUMMING UP
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Anything that is worth saying is worth repeating.
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Don't believe everything you are told or everything you read, including what follows. Don't rely on someone else's brain if it means not using your own.
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Between a lie that flatters and a truth that insults, always choose the insult. You may be wrong in doing so but never as consistently wrong as when you choose flattery.
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Propaganda works because it flatters by emphasizing the positive. Literature doesn't because it exposes ignorance or emphasizes the negative in those who parade as leaders of men and their dupes.
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At all times and everywhere, ignorance exceeds knowledge even in the wisest of men. We owe wars that are lost and revolutions that fail to men who refused to acknowledge his simple fact.
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Another instances of ignorance exceeding knowledge, and arrogance exceeding objective assessment is writers who write for readers who know better.
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I don't make policy. You have nothing to fear from me. I only expose contradictions. If you cannot see the contradiction, don't blame me. I cannot make the blind see, and no one can be as blind as the man who refuses to see.
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I suspect all talk of Armenian intelligence and cunning. There is an old Italian saying: “It takes seven Genoese [the smartest Italians] to fool a xxx, and seven xxxs to fool an Armenian.” I now see this saying as a warning to all those – including Armenians – who dare to deal with Armenians.
“After shaking hands with an Armenian, count your fingers.”
“After kissing an Armenian, count your teeth.”
If we were half as smart as we like to think we are, our history would not be the disaster area that it is.
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We have been victimized, true. But to suggest we had no say in shaping our destiny as a nation is a lie created by pathological liars, that is to say, propagandists.
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Understanding reality is a journey without end.
We can only take small steps in the direction of the truth.
The man who is searching is closer to the truth than the man who says he has found it.
No one can be as brainless as he who claims to have all the answers.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 9, 2010
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THE KEY
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The poor are told the rich will go to hell. This works to the advantage of the rich who are thus left alone to exploit the poor and to enjoy their wealth in peace.
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Where there is power there will also be tyranny, injustice, and oppression.
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If you were to add up oppressed or exploited minorities in “the land of the brave and the free,” or anywhere else for that matter, you will end up with a majority. But this majority is powerless to act because it is divided.
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Dominant minorities are experts in adopting and implementing what were known even to the Romans as “divide and rule” policies. Hence the phenomenon of Armenians whose enemy number one is neither the Turk nor the Russian but their fellow Armenians.
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What divides us are not truths voiced by honest men, but lies conceived and repeated by charlatans.
The question we must ask at this point is: Do our dividers know what they are doing?
My guess is, the men at the very top do, but their flunkies may not.
The men at the very top may not even be Armenian.
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Khorenatsi tells us the Mamigonians were of Chinese descent. The Bagratunis identified themselves as xxxs. One of our elder statesmen once informed me that some of our community leaders today are not of Armenian but of Turkish descent. “They may speak Armenian fluently, they may know all there is to know about us, but they are not Armenians.”
But i suggest an Armenian does not have to be a Turk to undermine the integrity of the nation. Greed for power (which is also universal) will render him blind – and we all know what happens when the blind lead the blind...
This indeed is the key to understanding our history.
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A so-called Armenian with so-called leadership qualities is first and foremost a man who is committed to the proposition that greed for power is thicker than loyalty to the tribe or any other principle of honesty, compassion, justice, and fair play. He will preach patriotism and practice treason without batting an eye. And if things go wrong he will come up with a thousand reasons why he should not be held accountable. And he will be believed, in the same way that most honest Christians believe the rich will go to hell and “the meek shall inherit the earth.”
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 10, 2010
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AN UNDIPLOMATIC EXCHANGE
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To emphasize his humble origins, Nixon once said to Khrushchev that his father had a grocery store in which he and his brothers had worked. Khrushchev's comment: “All shopkeepers are thieves.”
For more hilarious exchanges, see K BLOWS TOP: A COLD WAR COMIC INTERLUDE STARRING NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, AMERICA'S MOST UNLIKELY TOURIST by Peter Carlson (New York, 2009).
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ANOTHER FIRST
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Yesterday on the evening news on TV we were informed that a 5000-year old shoe had been discovered in Armenia. The leather shoe looked like a comfortable moccasin in excellent condition.
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FREUD ON SHAKESPEARE
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Freud thought Shakespeare was French and his real name was Jacques Pierre. And I think Cyrano de Bergerac was Armenian and his real name was Giragos. But that's only one proof of his Armenian identity, the other being the length of his nose.
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DEFINITION (I)
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I have read several definition of courage. To insult someone anonymously and from a safe distance is not one of them.
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DEFINITION (II)
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Cicero defined freedom as “participation in power.” As far as I know, no one has ever defined freedom as saying “Yes, sir!” to idiots.
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ON ISLAM
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John Selden (1650): “The Turks tell their People of a Heaven where there is a sensible Pleasure, but of a Hell where they shall suffer they don’t know what. The Christians quite invert this order; they tell us of a Hell where we shall feel sensible Pain, but of a Heaven where we shall enjoy we can’t tell what.”
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DEFINITION (III)
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My definition of bliss: The awareness that one is no longer dependent on the charity of swine and on the approval of morons.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 11, 2010
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KHRUSHCHEV AND THE KGB
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After he was ousted from office and acquired the status of a non-person, Khrushchev was ordered by the KGB not to write his memoir. “I refuse to obey you,” he told them. The order was unconstitutional, he said; so were the bugs placed in his home. “You stuck listening devices all over the dacha,” he told them, “even in the bathroom. You spend the people's money to eavesdrop on my farts.”
Eventually his memoir was smuggled to the West by his son. Translated and published in many countries, it became a best-seller. His son is now an American citizen.
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READING CHAMFORT
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Nicolas de Chamfort (1740-1794), French writer who was arrested under the Revolution and committed suicide. He is the author of THOUGHTS, MAXIMS, AND ANECDOTES, published posthumously.
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“One is happier when one is alone because in solitude one thinks of things, but in the company of others one is forced to think of men.”
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“Women are made to deal with our weaknesses and our foolishness, not with our reason. There exists between them and men epidermic sympathies but very few of intellect, soul, and character.”
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“There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.”
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“Nature never said 'Be thou not poor,' much less 'Be thou rich'; but she cries, 'Be thou independent!'”
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ON MY CRITICS
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When my critics (if you will forgive the overstatement) hurl insults at me (and anonymous insults at that) it means only one thing: they have run out of argument, assuming of course they had them to begin with -- and that's assuming a great deal.
To insult is not to criticize. And to insult anonymously is to compound stupidity with cowardice. Why would anyone be afraid of a minor scribbler who writes today and will be forgotten tomorrow? And to think that these are the offspring of men who a hundred ago challenged the might of an empire.
A far better man than myself once said: “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech.
I repeat: why would anyone be afraid of someone like me whose most formidable weapon is his common sense – which, it has been said, is the least common of all faculties.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 12, 2010
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ON CERTAINTIES
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The closer I get to a certainty
the more I am haunted by its contradiction.
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I have been wrong so often that
I never know when I am right – if I am ever right.
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I am here to assert not certainties
but to expose lies.
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God may know
but those who speak in His name do not.
It would be more accurate to say,
it's because they don't know
that they feel the need to speak in His name.
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There is a type of patriotism
that is reserved only for those who agree with us.
I suggest that's less patriotism and more dogmatism.
Whenever our enemies want to divide us
they rely on our dogmatism
and they are never disappointed.
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Those who understand the past
have a better chance to predict the future.
A prophet is first and foremost a historian.
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Both Ottomanism and Sovietism are based on the proposition
that the man at the top is always right
and to even suggest he may be wrong is treason.
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At the root of all wars and massacres
there stands a man who says
“We are right and they are wrong.”
All crimes against humanity are consequences of that lie.
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To adopt a propaganda line and to be wrong
might as well be synonymous.
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I don't ask my readers to believe in what I say.
All I ask is that they learn to think for themselves – but perhaps
that's asking too much.
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The Tree in the Garden was not of Knowledge but of Ignorance.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 13, 2010
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CONFESSIONS OF A MEGALOMANIAC
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My megalomania knows no bounds. I remember instances in my life when I thought my arguments were so irrefutable that they had a good chance to change the mind of an Armenian ignoramus. I keep forgetting that dupes of propaganda are never wrong.
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Propaganda is like an old pair of shoes – after you put them, you forget about them. By contrast, a new idea is like a new pair of shoes that pinch.
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Self-interest is the most powerful argument. All Turks have to do to convince Americans is to say that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were like Indians on the American continent.
Victimizers speak the same language regardless of nationality.
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People can be as smart as dogs when it comes to smelling fear.
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I was brought up to respect authority. I now think there is hardly any difference between respect for authority and fear of authority. A man of authority knows that anyone who respects him is also intimidated by him.
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I have yet to meet a man of authority who was not a contemptible jerk. I assume there are exceptions. But then, I write about rules not exceptions.
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On more than one occasion I have been taken to task (a euphemism for I have been verbally abused) for not being as brilliant as Hagop Baronian. If that were a crime, I deserve to be hanged.
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Giambattista Vico: “Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty…. Emancipated from ethics generally, they live by mutual spying and deceit.”
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If you can’t contradict the idea, insult the man.
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If you play it safe and write about birds serenading the moon or the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat, be prepared to be called a vodanavorji and ignored.
If, on the other hand, you decide to live dangerously and analyze our present situation with some degree of objectivity, be prepared to be reviled by readers who cannot chew gum and fart at the same time.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: elegy

June 14, 2010
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CONTEMPLATION VERSUS ACTION
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Christ and Renaissance popes,
Luther and televangelists,
Marx and Stalin:
men of contemplation and men of action are different
to the point of being contradictions.
What one builds the other destroys.
Where one enhances our understanding,
the other bullies and moronizes.
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You have political ambitions?
Teach yourself how to lie and how to believe in your own lies.
Be a sincere hypocrite.
Speak honestly with a forked tongue.
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Men of power are ruthless
because where there is power
there will be those who will want to take it away from you.
Men of power know this
because they suffer from the same disease – greed for power.
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We call our major defeats tragedies
and our minor victories triumphs.
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Intolerance of dissent is a confession of fear –
fear of ideas, fear of words,
and fear of being unmasked for what one really is:
a coward and a fool.
Only idiots cannot see this.
Authoritarianism is a conspiracy of fools and dupes.
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What could be more self-defeating
than an abundance of money and a total absence of ideas?
An abundance of fund-raisers
and a scarcity of intellectuals
is the surest symptom of a morally bankrupt community.
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There are no final answers.
Neither are there perfect answers.
An idea makes perfect sense
only when its contradiction or antithesis is suppressed,
that is to say, when progress is arrested.
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Mankind has always been at the mercy of better organized fools.
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Wars are declared by fools and fought by dupes.
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The only way to understand our enemies
is by being objective about ourselves.
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