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| Quotations 1-54 |
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| PREFACE It is a well known fact, as regrettable as it may be, that majority of writers, even the great ones, are remembered by most of us, at best, by only a few quotations from the many pages they have written. Bearing this in mind, I decided not to waste mine or anyone else's time but to write a book which contains nothing but quotations, namely, the quotations from myself. There is no any apparent or even intended connections between them. They are the different thoughts that came to my mind at different times and under different circumstances. Some of them are rather long (for a quotation), other are so short they sound almost axiomatic. But however long or short it is, each entry in this book represents in a more or less condensed form the end result of life-long experience and perpetual reflections. Thus, the book in some sense can be compared to a diary, though not of the events, but of ideas and opinions of the writer. I would also like to remind the reader that this is not a philosophical treatise, and though I try to support every point and statement made in it by some arguments, they are by no means exhaustive and rigorous in a strictly philosophical sense. After all this is a book of an essentially private person who wants to share his views, not to prove them to be absolutely correct and to convince the others to accept them as such. Furthermore, for the sake of authenticity all quotations remain in the same chronological order as they were originally written and editing, if any, has been limited to grammatical errors. And though the temptation to revise some of them, using the benefit of hindsight, was at times strong, everything has been left unchanged. I started this book in 1989 and finished it in 1998. Accordingly, it has been divided into 10 chapters, each containing what has been written down in the year indicated on each chapter's sub-cover, though the chronology , as I've already mentioned, seldom has any connection with content, since only a few entries represent the comments on the specific event happened during this or that year. And lastly, I have not spared any efforts in trying to make each and every quotation as clear and concise as I could. Whether I have succeeded or not is for the reader to judge. Nickolay Gurevich Toronto, 1999 QUOTATIONS 1-54 1. When I was young I had, as befitting such a tender age, many more questions than answers. Nowadays, quite often I find myself having more answers than questions. Am I getting old? 2. The biggest problem of the world today is that everybody, in one sense or another seems to be right. And so now we have to decide who is "righter", which is not easy at all and probably even impossible. 3. If you like facts more than opinions you should prefer the company of computers over the company of people. 4. It is blood, not gold, that is the universally recognized currency of the world. 5. The best or the worst happens to us when we are least expecting it. 6. I have been told often enough that I worry too much. Unfortunately, most of my worries at the end turn out to be justified. Which makes me worry the next time even more. Needless to say, I am reminded again that I worry too much. 7. A wise man telling the truth is defenceless against a lying fool. 8. We are constantly trying to fit the Past into the Procrustean bed of the Present. 9. Few of us are capable of killing ourselves but if the killer is someone else most of the people most of the times offer surprisingly little resistance. 10. We are governed more by changing rules than by permanent principles. 11. Man has to work in order to exist, not to justify his existence. 12. Though the facts are stubborn, those who do not wish to accept them are stubborn even more. On the other hand, people seldom question the most incredible statements if the conclusions made using these statements are such they would agree with. 13. We all have two sets of morals - one for ourselves and another for everybody else. 14. You know that you are in trouble when, while talking to yourself, you realize that even you are not listening. 15. If there is one good thing which could be said about talking to yourself it is that nobody is going to ask you "what do you mean by this". 16. For those benighted many who could not themselves find justification for their prejudices there are always the enlightened few who are more than eager to provide them with it. 17. It seems obvious that for people to be good friends they have to know each other well. But only up to a certain point. For knowing each other too well often turns the best friends into the worst enemies. 18. Though our productivity and, as a result of it, our consumption grow fast, our desire to consume grows even faster, so that we constantly feel deprived and wanting. Which in its turn compels us to produce even more. And so we find ourselves locked in this vicious circle forever. And we call it - Progress. 19. If it is true that the more we study the more we discover how little we know, why waste all this valuable time for learning. Let's declare right at the start that true knowledge is unobtainable and stop even trying. And you would be surprised how many people do just that and live happily ever after. 20. In most countries nationalism is a passion. But the ever practical Canadians turned it into a profession and a very lucrative one at that. 21. The one thing that finally convinced me that Toronto is a world class cosmopolitan city is hearing a Chinese telling an anti-Semitic anecdote to a WASP. 22. It is no wonder that Toronto is such a clean city. Because at times it seems that the main preoccupation of its inhabitants is "taking each other to the cleaners". 23. If I have to be on TV, given a choice, I would rather be in a commercial where I'll get paid, than in the news where I'll get maimed. 24. "They are well-educated and articulate but essentially uncommunicative in the elegant way that only the most refined WASPs can be." I don't remember now where I've read this phrase but I do remember that it struck me as an attempt to connect the qualities which are essentially contradictory, even mutually exclusive. For how can one be articulate without communicating what one articulates? Isn't it like being a singer who cannot sing or a painter who cannot paint? 25. Christianity is a Greek religion with a Jewish God. 26. While men are thinking about the meaning of life, women are living it. 27. He came from a good Catholic family: his mother was a nun and his father was a priest. 28. It is not just the Mounties that, as the saying goes, always get their man. I knew some women who could do it just as well, if not better. 29 For anyone who doesn't want to stick out there is always a quiet corner to hide. As a matter of fact, there are more of such quiet corners in the world than people. 30. Like other philosophers before and after him, Plato had his favourite set of subjects and ideas which he would explore in his writings over and over again. Yet, even among the most repeated themes there is one that stands out and runs through all Plato's dialogues - the position of philosophers in society. In his not totally unbiased opinion, they are veritably a breed apart from the rest of humanity. They are endowed with all possible virtues and the only ones qualified to rule. Now, considering Plato's opinion of himself as the greatest, after Socrates, among Greek philosophers (hasn't he defeated each one of them, albeit as Socrates's alter ego, in his dialogues) and also his position as head of Academy, the leading school of philosophy in Greece, this aspect of Plato's writings can be viewed as a remarkable case of self-advertising. 31. Plato refutes the rule by finding an exception, but then, he turns around and presents the same exception as a rule. And in this he is not significantly different from the majority of men. For everyone knows somebody who, to prove his point, does exactly the same thing. 32. The man who is the most obsequious to those above him is usually the one who is also the most arrogant and obnoxious towards those below him. 33. Any movement is relative. That's why we can notice that life is passing us by only when it is accompanied by somebody else. 34. He was a man addicted to suffering. His own pain was not enough for him. He had, at least vicariously, to suffer the pain of the others too. Such a greed for pain is unnatural and, like anything unnatural, was bad for him. 35. And what about all this unused, wasted cleverness one has acquired by reading wise books and thinking over them? What to do with it? One has to let it out somehow in order not to explode by holding it inside like the fermenting wine in a sealed bottle. But when this bottled up cleverness and wisdom starts pouring out of you it is like a deluge and everybody in a close proximity feels flooded over and naturally tries to escape in fear for his mental sovereignty. And you always find yourself afterwards feeling even more alone than before and more depressed on the top of it. 36. Do you know how it feels to be always a recipient of the reflected warmth? 37. In order to take control of your life and to make the right decisions try to reduce your choices to the manageable amount. But don't overdo it lest you start to feel that your life is becoming too impoverished. 38. Biblical texts represent the strongest and the fullest criticism of human nature and of the society created by Man. Yet there is a hope in it, there must be a hope. And the name of hope is God. The Bible without God is the most pessimistic document of Mankind. Maybe because of faith in God, Biblical writers had allowed themselves to be so uncompromisingly, even brutally honest. Or maybe faith is an excuse for the desire to live, despite of all the futility and horrors of life. 39. The desire for the continuation of life is a desire to do what gives us pleasure. For different people it could be a different thing: for some - food, for others - sex, yet for others - art, etc. But as long as man finds a pleasure in doing something, he usually wants to do it in perpetuity, and for this he must continue to live. Life therefore can be viewed as a continuous activity in the pursuit of pleasure. 40. This is a quotation from the article in "The Globe and Mail": "Several Western countries, including Canada, were reluctant to have the conference at all. They feared it would inspire arguments that couldn't be won." What a revealing statement! Do they always have to win the argument? And how peculiarly English-Canadian is this attitude of reluctance to be engaged in any spontaneous informal discussion, the outcome of which is not known beforehand. It also betrays a deep seated sense of intellectual insecurity, requiring constantly to put on a facade of self-assertion, often bordering on arrogance. And all this is being done in the name of a short-sighted pragmatism. To win for what? For comfortable and secure but dull and essentially lonely life as a result of depriving themselves and the others of the most natural of all human interactions - free, spontaneous and uninhibited conversation where mind meets mind, soul meets soul, and man meets man. And everybody wins, because by doing this we have nothing to lose but our loneliness. 41. It takes a really great philosopher to assume, to prove his point or simply for the argument's sake, a single tree to be a forest and then to get lost in it. 42. Being a man, I don't know if women in general have greater, than men, capacity for love. On the other hand, being a man, I am almost certain that in some particular cases women definitely have greater capacity for hate than man. 43. The thin veneer of civilization is still better than no veneer at all. But it must be viewed and treated as such, and not as a thick and solid wall. 44. BIG can only be beautiful when it had evolved from a beautiful SMALL. That which was ugly at the beginning will only get uglier as it grows bigger. 45. We know all about a girl that kissed an ugly frog, and got herself a charming prince which is, indeed, in vogue. Yet one more story must be told, as true as the one in vogue, about a girl that kissed a prince and turned him into a frog. 46. Ask and maybe it will be given to you. But if you don't ask even what you already have will be taken away from you. 47. If they are "creme de la creme" I wonder sometimes what was the quality of milk this "creme" was made of. 48. The light we see at the end of the tunnel usually comes from a lamp hanging at the entrance to the next one. 49. For an intellect to be ignored is much worse than to be oppressed. 50. Every pleasure has its measure which makes it a burden or a treasure. 51. Whatever the topic, my conversations with other people would run more or less smoothly until I say something out of the ordinary, at least from my interlocutor's point of view. From that moment on, almost without exception, it is "I" who becomes the main subject of conversation and whatever has been discussed before moves to the second place or disappears altogether. 52. Judaism hasn't been for the most part of its existence a state religion and therefore had to depend on persuasion rather than force to keep a faith alive. Since it could not coerce it had to convince, to give reasons for a belief, and in this sense it was a religion by consensus, more democratic than most religions of the past or even of the present. 53. Every man lives in a private world of his own experience from which his unique knowledge is derived. Thus one man can only understand another to the degree their knowledge coincides, which in turn depends on how similar their respective experiences are. On a scale from "0" to "1", assuming that "0" represents complete absence of any similarity and "1" total sameness of their experiences, we are always somewhere between these two extremes, never reaching either. Consequently, though we can never understand each other completely, some degree of mutual comprehension is always not only possible but indeed present. 54. There are no theorems without axioms. Otherwise no proof can ever be finished. Certain things just have to be accepted as obvious. If not, every statement can be questioned ad infinitum, since everything is explained in terms of something else which, in its turn, is explained through something else again, and so on and so forth. This phenomena had necessitated the development since ancient times in every society of the system of axioms which could be compared to a system of beliefs, kind of religion of axioms. But this particular religion unlike any others is almost universally accepted. It represent the common human heritage, uniting Australian aboriginal and nuclear physicist as members of one human family, helping them to understand each other despite the enormous differences that separate them. |
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