Thursday, August 03, 2006
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We like to bend reality in our favor, but reality being much older and more “cunning” (Hegel) than us, has its own ideas. Had he lived long enough to witness Stalinism, Marx would have been the most disappointed man on earth. It is said of Elias Canetti that he was disappointed to realize that his book, CROWDS AND POWER, failed to prevent a single war. And think of Napoleon spending his last years in exile in a rat-infested villa on the island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic and at the mercy of a sadistic English governor. And then there is Einstein: when told he had helped invent the atom bomb, he is quoted as having said, “If only I had known, I should have become a plumber.”
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We like to portray ourselves as innocent victims of Turkish atrocities, but in our relations with one another our first priority seems to be to verbally abuse, humiliate and insult anyone who dares to disagree with us, and we do this without any sense of guilt or doubt as if we were on a mission from god. I shiver to think what may happen to the rest of the world on the day and by some satanic miracle we become an imperial power.
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To be able to smile once a day is worth a small fortune.
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The decency of a people can be judged by the way they treat their pets and poets.
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The encounter of the ruthless with the inept: our history in a nutshell.
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Friday, August 04, 2006
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Is friendship between Armenians and Turks possible? I am not sure. Some day in the distant future we may be able to bury the hatchet, but I suspect we will never forget where we buried it.
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To say all our misfortunes are due to our geography is to imply that Armenia is a good place to die.
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Never argue with a man whose most powerful argument is his bad breath.
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The certainty of being right is what’s wrong with most people. All crimes against humanity begin with the conviction on the part of the perpetrators that they are right and their victims wrong.
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As a rule, fanatics who say God is on their side are not in the habit of wasting any time worrying whether or not they are on His.
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The more ignorant they are, the more patriotic they pretend to be, as if to say, “We may know less, but we love the flag more.”
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A small group of thoughtful, committed men can change the world; but an even smaller group of thoughtless fanatics can destroy it.
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Dying is easy. Writing for Armenians is hard.
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There is more truth in the advertisements of our partisan weeklies than in their commentaries and editorials, and I have never even been remotely tempted to buy anything they advertise.
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As children we are brought up to trust our fellow Armenians and to suspect odars. As adults we learn to trust crooked odars more than honest Armenians.
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Saturday, August 05, 2006
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Nothing gives me more pleasure than to be contradicted by someone who makes sense – I may learn something. And nothing annoys me more than to be contradicted by someone who recycles the kind of nonsense I was taught as a child.
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Unanimity is easily achieved among moral morons and mental midgets.
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“Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Armenian translation: Scream at the top of your lungs and carry a toothpick.
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Hating is easy – any child can hate. What’s difficult is understanding.
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We begin to think only on the day we learn to think against ourselves.
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Our partisan weeklies print 99% anti-Turkish propaganda and 1% nonsense and they tell me I am consistently negative. In their eyes all talk of Turks, massacres, hatred and intolerance is positive, understanding and truth negative.
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I chose Armenian literature for the same reason that some people choose suicide.
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Because the dead cannot speak, our “betters” say, “We did what’s best for the people.”
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Never trust the judgment of a nation whose perennial best sellers are cookbooks.
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