Sunday, July 01, 2007
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PROVERBS
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From 1001 YIDDISH PROVERBS
by Fred Kogos (New York, 1970).
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A friend you have to buy; enemies you get for nothing.
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A half truth is a whole lie.
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A liar tells his story so often that he gets to believe it himself.
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One God and so many enemies.
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One lie is a lie, two are lies, but three is politics!
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When a wise man talks to a fool, two fools are talking.
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When God wants to break a man’s heart, he gives him a lot of sense.
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Truth is the safest lie.
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The masses are asses.
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The rich have no sense of justice.
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The heaviest burden is an empty pocket.
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Monday, July 02, 2007
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NOTES AND COMMENTS
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We preach freedom of speech to others but among ourselves we practice censorship, and we are too self-righteous and arrogant to see a contradiction or even an inconsistency.
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Hatred becomes pathological when you hate even those who don’t share your hatred.
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Born to Armenian parents in Greece, educated in Italy, now a citizen of Canada and living in the shadow of the United States, I know to what extent nationalism and patriotism limit, distort, and even pervert a man’s perception of the world and his fellow men.
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Anyone who is against us is not necessarily wrong and anyone who is with us is not necessarily right.
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Adopting an anti-Turkish stance does not in any way strengthen our case. On the contrary.
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To proceed on the assumption that Turks are bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians and compulsive liars is to guarantee that we will never reach a consensus with them.
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We are unaware of our failings because they have become habits.
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Tuesday, July 03, 2007
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PHONY PUNDITS
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When a charlatan speaks the truth, he is bound to contaminate it with charlatanism. One reason why I am against phony pundits speaking about the Genocide…or anything else, for that matter.
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PARADOX
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In her acknowledgments to her novel THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL (New York, 2007), Elif Shafak writes: “I am particularly indebted to Armenian and Turkish grandmothers, who have an almost natural ability to transcend the very boundaries that nationalists on each side take for granted.”
There you have it, the paradox of our collective existence: the generation that experienced the massacres and deportations is more progressive in its thinking than the generation that followed it.
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PROPAGANDA
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Between writers and politicians, the masses will always choose to trust the politicians not because politicians know better or are smarter but because they control the media and the machinery of propaganda.
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CENSORSHIP
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Censorship in defense of truth, never. Censorship in defense of lies, always!
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MORE YIDDISH PROVERBS
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God protects the poor from expensive sins.
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God loves the poor and helps the rich.
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He who is silent means something just the same.
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The worst libel is the truth.
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Wednesday, July 04, 2007
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OBSERVATIONS
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If you know you are a fool, you are almost smart.
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We speak the worst lies when we speak of ourselves.
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A story with a happy ending is an interrupted story.
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If you believe you are smart no one except reality will make you change your mind, and sometimes not even that.
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Our Turcocentric pundits write about the Turkishness of Turks. I prefer to write about the Turkishness of Armenians.
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You tell a fool he is smart and he will believe it.
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The smarter you are in one thing the dumber you will be in a thousand others. Like all rules this one too has its exceptions – two of them, as a matter of fact: Leonardo da Vinci and Jack S. Avanakian.
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Three of the paintings in 1001 PAINTINGS YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, Selected by Leading International Critics (New York, 2006) are by Sarkis Katchadourian (1886-1947) (“Three Generations”), and by Arshile Gorky (real name Vostanig Adoian: 1904-1948) (“The Leaf of the Artichoke Is an Owl” and “Betrothal I”).
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