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Sunday, December 25, 2011
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IN BRIEF
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The victims of politicians
outnumber the victims of criminals.
*
There are two gods:
the god of priests and the other one.
We know a great deal about the first,
nothing about the other.
*
Turks are brainwashed to believe
they are noble specimens of humanity
to the same degree
that we are brainwashed to believe
we are smart.
Why should we be surprised
if the encounter of these two big lies
resulted in massacres?
*
I should like to read an interview
with a political or religious leader
that begins with the question:
“Let’s cut the crap, shall we?”
*
“What the hell happened to you?”
would be my first question
to one of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors.
*
Violence works but only at first.
Lies convince but only dupes.
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Monday, December 26, 2011
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AS I SEE IT
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Sometimes I am misunderstood
not because I am difficult to understand
but because the brainwashing has been
too systematic, thorough, and successful.
*
To speak of the “Red” Genocide
in order to cover up the “White” one,
or to speak of past violations of human rights
in order to cover up present ones:
what could be more horribly cynical?
Or rather: what could be
more quintessentially Armenian?
*
Animals defend their territory.
Men do too. But men also defend
their prestige, pride, vanity,
prejudices and ignorance.
*
Speaking with a forked tongue
comes naturally to most lawyers, politicians,
statesmen, religious leaders, businessmen, and so on.
And the higher their position in the hierarchy
the more transparent their double-talk.
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Tuesday, December 27, 2011
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ACTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES
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There are two kinds of actions:
planned and spontaneous.
The Tunisian fruit vendor’s self-immolation
was spontaneous;
the actions of our revoltuionaries
at the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire
were planned.
The first was a success beyond anyone’s imagination;
the second resulted in one of the greatest disasters
in the history of mankind.
*
History is unpredictable.
God laughs at man’s plans and calculations.
The selfless act has a much better chance to succeed,
and sometimes to succeed beyond anyone’s imagination,
than the cold-blooded, carefully planned and calculated act.
*
Marx thought he had discovered the way history works
and he created the nightmare of communist regimes.
When Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within you,”
he should have added,
“so is the empire of the Devil.”
*
“Existence is a vicious abstraction,”
Bertrand Russell tells us; which means
our actions will inevitably end
in an existential labyrinth of consequences
whose end result will be totally unpredictable.
*
Elsewhere Russell writes:
“Since men tend to value present pleasures
more than pleasures in the future,
the wise man will exercise prudence and self-restraint.”
He should have added, “by which time the wise man
may be too old to get it up.”
*
Moral: No matter what you decide to do,
you may regret it.
Bouazisi did not live long enough
to witness his final victory.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2011
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NOTES & COMMENTS
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Anyone who is committed to an ideology or religion
will have his own version of the past.
Believers are natural-born revisionists.
*
All political parties,
regardless of nationality and ideology,
have a tendency to promise more than they can deliver;
sometimes they even promise heaven and deliver hell.
*
It is only natural for those who are part of the problem
to pretend not to see the solution.
*
Never insult an Armenian writer:
being one is insult enough.
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