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| QUOTATIONS 1683-1717 |
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| 1683. One of the most revolutionary phenomena of our times is the revolt of "ordinary people" against their ordinariness and obscurity. More and more of them are willing to do anything to break out of this prison of insignificance and invisibility. 1684. Regarding the recent cooling off the relationship between United States and Europe I ‘m surprised by all this weeping and gnashing of teeth about it, especially by the American academics. I personally think that things simply getting back to normal. The extraordinary closeness of US and Europe during the last 50 years was an exception due to the exceptional circumstances (too well known to be elaborated upon here). But as always, when the exceptional circumstances no longer exist life returns to its natural state. And the natural state in this case is the greater or lesser divergence of interests between two continents separated by thousands of miles geographically and by many historic and cultural differences ideologically. It is unreasonable to wring one's hands and to lament passing of something which was temporary as if it could have lasted forever. There was a hot honeymoon, followed by warm marriage. It's time now for an amicable divorce and a good friendship. 1685. I envy people who are in a position to sacrifice some of the present pleasures for the benefits of the future, who have to do no more than to deny themselves small indulgences now so as to be able to prolong the painless, comfortable existence into the times still far away. Alas, not me. For as long as I remember I had to do it everyday, often to the point of almost complete self-denial. And not for some distant future but for a sake of the next day. Yes, everyday I had to deprive myself of the most innocent physical gratifications, which others take for granted, unthinkingly, in order to avoid, to escape the immediate retribution of my fragile, vengeful body, which seems to contain so much pain and so little pleasure. It always demanded the repayment right away: borrow today pay tomorrow and with the loan-shark interest, or I will brake your bones, wrench your guts, torn your sinews. That's the way my body speaks to me. And I've learned to listen to it and to obey. For there is no escape but death. 1686. If a life of a man can be compared to food then childhood is a breakfast, youth is a lunch, middle age is a dinner, and the old age is the leftovers. 1687. Acquiring a foreign language is similar to integrating a transplanted organ into one's body. For as body's immune system rejects this organ as an intruding and unwelcome alien and taking anti-rejection medication for the rest of a recipient's life becomes a necessity, so does brain resists the intrusion of a foreign language and the continuous study of it also for the rest of one's life becomes a necessity. And not only in order to improve one's linguistic skills but just to maintain the gains made in the early stage of learning. 1688. Do not throw pearls in front of swine Pigs love to trample on Devine. 1689. If it could be of any help, I would like to clarify something for the people who at a certain stage of their lives begin to complain that "life has lost its meaning". It never had, i.e. it had no more meaning when you were 20 than now when you are 70. At 20 there were just more of it ahead of you and at 70 there is less. That's the only difference. For from the prospective not only of eternity but of temporal human history the life of the young is as meaningless as life of the old. So, stop complaining and enjoy, if you can, what is left of it. 1690. Himmler, allegedly, lamented the paradoxical fact that while 80 million Germans supported Nazis' persecution of the Jews, each of them knew at least one "good jew" who should be spared. He, probably, would have been relieved from his anxiety and much more pleased if he only considered this paradoxical phenomenon in reverse, i.e. though each of the 80 million Germans knew at least one "good jew", collectively they still supported the Nazis' persecution of them all. And this is the cruel paradox the Jews had always to live with. For being "good" i.e.warmhearted and forgiving, loving their enemies and offering the other cheek, in a word, truly practicing what the Christians only preached, didn't help them much. If one could be philosophical about it (for what is philosophy if not a sublimation of inability to change things into explanation of them) one may attempt to explain this tragic paradox by considering the essentially deductive rather than inductive nature of anti-Semitism. For if it was inductive it would follow like this: "Every Jew I've ever met was a scoundrel, therefore all Jews must be scoundrels". But that's not how anti-Semitism works. On the contrary, as in any deductive argument, it starts with a priori conclusion that all Jews are scoundrels and then proceeds to view every individual Jew as such, regardless whether he personally displays any characteristics of scoundrel. In case he doesn't he must be skillfully concealing them, in case he does he just confirms the original conviction of anti-Semite. In such a scheme of things, i.e. anti-Semitic world view, which is predominant, there is no escape for any Jew from being considered a scoundrel. For no matter how "good" this or that particular Jew in reality is, since the Universal Jew is a priori declared to be a scoundrel, declared by history, religion, tradition, culture, etc., he is condemned a priori without any recourse to appeal as well. 1690.If one could never do what one wanted to do, at least after spending many years on this planet one must have earned the right not to do anymore what one doesn't want to. 1691. As an occasional ray of sunlight breaking through the thick, gray clouds is more appreciated and welcomed with more joy than an unobstructed shining of the sun in the clear blue sky, so the rare sentence or paragraph of good writing suddenly appearing after pages and pages of the foggy and opaque prose, as for example in the vaunted Joyce's Ulysses, is greeted by the starved and exhausted reader as a piece of great writing. Though, in truth, it only seems great in comparison with the bulk of dreadful monotony of the rest. 1692. To face death with equanimity, to even welcome it one must be tired of life. And to become tired of life one must, like with any other activity, engage oneself into it fully and vigorously, so that at the end of life one has tried and done as many different things as was possible under the circumstances and eventually came to the point when nothing new or interesting was left for him to do (been there, done that). After that there seems to be no reason to prolong one's existence which promises nothing but boredom in the future. So, to sum up, the best preparation for death is full and active life. But, some may object, isn't it equally possible that after partaking of all that life has to offer, a man would want to carry on in the same vein indefinitely, rather than to be separated from all he used to enjoy? The answer lies in the word "used". For the most essential part of human nature, its blessing or its curse, is tendency to get sated. Sooner or later the most desirable, the most enjoyed once, turns, as if by magic, into unwanted and insipid, even detestable. And after long and active life this may include most of what men do in this world. Then death comes not as a joy-killer but as a rescuer, as a reliever from tediousness of existence. 1693. May I suggest to the young Muslim men, who are planning to become the suicide-bombers to gain the rewards of the afterlife, to consider the possibility that (to paraphrase an English proverb "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush") a virgin here on Earth is worth seventy in Paradise. 1694. Here is a dilemma: a person who has something interesting to say is seldom a good listener. On the other hand, telling anything to one who is willing to listen only because he has nothing to say himself is a waste of time. 1695. As far as culture is concerned Canada (by which I mean its English part) is a "second hand", "used", "previously owned", "hand-me-down" country. Whether in music, visual art, literature, cinema, architecture, etc. nothing which is unique to this land had ever sprung from its soil. Everything originally came from some place else and then has been copied and imitated here. 1696. One who attends, if only occasionally, opera, ballet and classical music concerts can't help but notice that actually two kind of performances take place there: the main, ostensible one on stage being done by the artists and musicians, and the secondary by the audience which accustomed to the long standing etiquette of such occasions knows what is expected of it and delightfully obliges. Hence the "spontaneous" burst of applause in all the "right" places with appropriate (and highly calibrated) enthusiasm, occasional shouts "bravo" here and there by the enraptured individuals seemingly incapable of restraining their emotions, collective clapping of hands, which became a tradition to provide a background for some orchestral march like pieces, etc., etc. And finally, at the end of the whole stylized ritual, the long standing ovations without which the "event" doesn't seem to be completed. All in all, there seems to exist a kind of implied contract between the performers and the audience, which is - the performers are unquestionably brilliant (they must be, considering the price one has to pay for a ticket nowadays), and the members of the audience are, invariably, the sophisticated connoisseurs, the elite of the society, uniquely qualified to understand and appreciate this brilliance. It takes an exceptionally bad performance to cancel this "contract". Otherwise, even the mediocre ones are accorded the same enthusiastic treatment - the qualification of the viewers would not survive the nakedness of the Emperor. 1697. Having done it often enough myself, I am, nevertheless, beginning to think that it's unfair to criticize any movie for not depicting life realistically. More than that, I don't believe anymore it's even reasonable to expect them to be realistic, for people who make movies are not realists. If they were, they would have been working as accountants or engineers. What we see in the movies is a life as it should or shouldn't be, but never as it is, for those who make them are either unwilling or unable to accept it as such. 1698. There are nuclear families and then there are thermonuclear ones. 1699. On the streets of Toronto the only people who greet you are the panhandlers. 1700. In some respect the relationship between two friends are similar to that of two lovers. For both in love and in friendship there is a wooer and the wooed, the initiator and the respondent, one who is active and one who is passive, or, to use by now obsolete terminology, one embodying the masculine principle and another -the feminine. Because of this similarity there appears to be some homosexual undertones in a friendship of two men, and lesbian when two friends are women, even though in the overwhelming majority of the cases the sexual element is completely absent. Furthermore, such an appearance of the sexual role playing in a friendship gave rise recently to a largely mistaken notion that no intimate relationships between two individuals are purely homo- or hetero-sexual, bur rather both are the parts of the so-called "continuum". 1701. When two different people stand on the shore of the Ocean what one may see is the immense magnificence of Nature, while to the other it reminds of the infinite insignificance of man. 1702. Still drunk with sadness of my mother milk, Her sorrows are running through my veins, Her silent grief my aching heart contains Two of a kind we were, of the same ilk. 1703. All my life I was poor. To cope with poverty, both practically(to survive) and psychologically(to retain some dignity), I had to reduce my needs and wants to the mere necessities. Now, not having to worry any longer about "rainy day" (the security of pension and subsidized housing took care of that) I have actually more money to spend than when I was working. Yet, the spending I cannot do. Every now and then, I rack my brains asking myself what I want or need, now that I can afford it. And the sobering and somewhat disappointing answer is I want and need nothing but the mere necessities. What was originally a coping mechanism became my essence and I am too old and too disillusioned to change myself. To quote Marshall McLuhan "We shape our tools and then our tools shape us". 1704. There are few things in this world more humbling to a man than trying to fulfill his ambitions only to realize in the process how much he overestimated his potentials. Therefore, for the majority of men, regret of never having the opportunity to actualize one's capacities is less painful than the failure to succeed while attempting to do so. 1705. When a man tells the same joke 100 times he is insufferable bore. But let him get on the stage and do it for money and he is a popular comedian. 1706. In their preferences for a sexual partner men and women are quite opposites. A man is looking for a virgin, while a woman gets the greatest satisfaction in taking a man from another woman. 1707. On the ancient Greek vase a singer is playing a lyre not a bouzouki - the glory that was Greece is no more. 1708. The Christianity and its Church had always two aspects to it -one ugly and cruel, another beautiful and kind. The first is characterized by arrogance, intolerance, conservatism and oppression, the second - by humility, charity, compassion and open-mindedness. Throughout its 2000 year of history when in position of power and authority it invariably displayed its first aspect and when out of power, and especially when it was persecuted, the second. One may say that when things are bad for the Church it is good, and when its fortune reversed for the better it gets worse. 1709. Every "good advice" one gives to the other is essentially a self-justification in disguise, the act of reassuring oneself in the validity of one's thoughts and correctness of one's behavior, which therefore should be emulated by the others for their own good. 1710. The willingness of its adherents to suffer or even to die for it may be necessary but is by no means a sufficient proof of objective validity of ideology or religion. While a martyr's death provides the convincing testimony of sincerity of his beliefs, it says nothing about the truth of his faith. 1711. In the world of business and politics it certainly helps to be smarter and more informed than your competitors, but not by much. For then they will refuse "to play with you" and all your smarts and knowledge will become useless. The same rule applies to other human interactions and relations, like for example friendship and marriage. For either to have a chance of success, though it is inevitable that out of two parties in them one will always be superior to the other, the less the difference is the better. Otherwise, a sense (and display) of superiority by one side and inferiority by the other will make relationship hard to endure for both. The best they can hope for is to pretend that difference doesn't exist. But the relationship founded on pretense cannot endure for long. Clash of vanities and sensitivities will sooner or later destroy it. 1712. In North American context, where everybody eats practically the same food, the old saying "you are what you it" has to be updated to "you are what and how you drive." For driving seems to be the only type of activity left to North Americana to express their individuality. 1713. The poor are poor, the rich are rich, and nothing, seems, can this wall breach. No laws, no schemes, no constitutions, not even bloody revolutions Can change this basic fact. Alas, the poor will always be with us. Their ox, their ass the rich shall covet and wouldn't rest until they have it. Earned with the sweat of their brow their daily bread the rich'll devour. The house built with their hands to live in, they must pay the rents. And even when they dig a well to drink from it, they pay as well. And so it goes, to each his each, the poor are poor, the rich are rich. 1714. Those members of the educated class who sooner or later embrace, often defiantly, even militantly, anti-intellectualism, deceive themselves by quite sincerely believing that the cause of such a revolt is the disillusionment with the best the culture can offer. In reality, however, they were never, by their very nature, interested in the workings of the great intellects, nor in the "best" of literature, music and art, but were forced into it by educational system, parents and their own vanity, like a man who is forced to carry the load which is beyond his strength. And as soon as they acquire "freedom", i.e., social independence, they throw off (with a great sense of relief) this heavy load of the "high brow" culture and happily immerse themselves in mediocracy as their natural environment. Never truly attracted by the great literature, music and art, but, on the contrary, feeling oppressed and intimidated by it in their youth, they discard it as soon as it socially acceptable and comfortably settle into the "low brow" pursuits, which was their native habitat to begin with. 1715. From the sublime to the ridiculous is but one step, and this step is unfailingly made by Hollywood turning again and again the great works of literature into the mediocre films. 1716. There is this old division of labour between The Jews and the Gentiles: the Jews are specializing in enduring pain and the Gentiles in inflicting it upon them. Both sides take their responsibilities very seriously: the Gentiles continue to devise the new and more sophisticated method of torturing the Jews, and the Jews forever looking for better explanation why they suffer and hope that other sufferers will benefit from their expertise in living with pain. Any relationships between the abuser and the abused can only last for as long as the abused is willing to pay for his/her existence with submission to suffering and humiliation. The moment he/she refuses to do so his/her very life is in danger. Such are the relationships between the world and the Jews. They are allowed to exist for as long as they are willing to submit to abuse and humiliation. Any attempt on their part to throw off this yoke is met with fury and harsh, often deadly, retribution. It is as if there is some unwritten contract between the Jews and the rest: "We will allow you to live for as long as you agree to always live in pain, and do not fight back when we inflict it on you." And that is precisely what the relationships between the abuser and the abused are all about. 1717. For a cat who can't decide which way to go, there is always a dog who would help him to make up his mind. |
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