Thursday, September 01, 2005
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ELEGY
A sea of tears
Will not raise
A single dead
And a thousand years of hatred
Will not reform
A single Turk
And yet
We continue to lament our dead
And to hate the Turk.
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Anyone who has loved and hated knows that love and hatred are quintessentially misleading emotions.
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To be brainwashed means to be unable to move beyond propaganda.
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When we criticize another we assume we don’t have his faults.
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A fanatic is one who is incapable of detecting contradictions within himself, and whenever these contradictions are pointed out to him, he becomes deaf, dumb, and blind.
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To speak from the gutter means to threaten those who dare to contradict you that they too may be dragged down there.
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GOOD OLD DAYS
When he was alive Homer was not a best seller; neither did he submit his works to an editor.
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Denis Donikian: “The most pedestrian ideas come to us under the banner of tolerance. Likewise, the most rabid intolerance is promoted in the name of love.”
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Friday, September 02, 2005
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Whenever as a boy I learned to appreciate a new symphony by Beethoven I thought I had overcome another barrier separating me from civilization. Then, one day, I woke up and found myself surrounded by barbarians.
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It’s not easy being right in an Armenian environment because the sources of most of our contradictions are conflicting self -interests compounded by oversized egos and undersized brains.
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If you behave in an undiplomatic manner in a diplomatic environment, you will be recalled and fired by your superiors. And if you behave like a barbarian in a civilized environment you will be ignored because some civilized people may not share your taste for the gutter. You may now be in a better position to understand why I choose to ignore some of my critics (if you will forgive the overstatement).
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It is not enough being right; one must be right in a right way.
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Where everyone claims to be right, some are bound to be wrong; and where everyone asserts infallibility, everyone is wrong.
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Saturday, September 03, 2005
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Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), political philosopher: “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the Revolution.” This may explain why (according to Hagop Garabents) our revolutionaries were willing to shed their blood for freedom a hundred years ago but they are now afraid of free speech.
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I may know what I want today, but for the life of me I don’t understand why I wanted what I wanted yesterday, and I have no idea what I will want tomorrow.
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There is an old American saying: “Every shut eye ain’t asleep.” Likewise, just because he ain’t buried it don’t mean he ain’t dead.
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Anyone can forgive the forgivable. The trick is forgiving the unforgivable.
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I am willing to trust a good Armenian and a good Turk, and what I trust in them is not their Armenian or Turkish identity but their goodness, which recognizes no geographic boundaries.
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