aphorist

Aphorist's Corner Weekly

by Igor D. Radovic

Foreword

Aphorisms, like epigrams, apothegms, maxims, axioms, proverbs, sayings, adages, bon mots and many other familiar quotations are examples of meaning and clarity enhanced by brevity. But, sadly, concise and to the point are waging a losing battle in our modern age of verbal overkill and ubiquitous, round-the-clock media babble. All the same, aphorisms and related forms, on a par with poetry, are without peer in their capacity to cut, in a sentence or two, and sometimes in most unexpected ways, to the heart of a subject that learned volumes often leave only more confusing and obscure. Eclectic, long on substance, experience and common sense, and short on empty verbiage, they are also thought provoking, easily remembered, and within the reach of any audience. Yet, for all that, aphorisms remain a comparatively and undeservedly neglected literary genre. Aphorist's Corner Weekly pays a modest tribute to it by reminding us that whatever is worth saying can usually be said better, and to better effect, with fewer rather than with more words.

As its name indicates, Aphorist's CornerWeekly (http://home.earthlink.net/~iradovic/aphorist.htm) is regularly updated. New text - this author's own attempts at aphorisms and brief personal comments on a broad variety of topics of general interest - is added every week as old text is simultaneously removed, for a rolling total of ten weeks. The views expressed in these observations are largely a matter of opinion and, admittedly, occasionally resort to overstatements and understatements to make a point, and they may sometimes err on the side of both the obvious and the ambiguous. But, more importantly, they also reflect, to the extent possible, a deliberate and sustained effort to avoid preconceived ideas and generalizations, so that they may lead to conclusions rather than be preceded and influenced by them, even if at some risk of ignoring experience, of too easily giving in to first and superficial impressions, and of courting contradictions. Whether this risk was worth taking the readers will judge by themselves.

Sources:

Week 405 - BORING & INTERESTING

The person least likely to find a bore boring is yet another bore.
Fortunately for them, many of those who live boring lives are not aware of it.
Boredom knows many more palliatives than cures.
Bores bore others much more than themselves.
More boredom comes from within than from without.
Dull keeps company with good more often than with naughty.
Where tiresome ends, tiring often begins.
Sometimes it is the struggle, sometimes the tedium of it that brings us down.
Boring that turns surprising is still short of interesting.
After decades of trying to be interesting and entertain others, the old are entitled to refuse to be bored by them.
Some things are of intrinsic interest; some, like cricket and royalty, are made interesting by the interest many have in them.
That they make no sense, and nothing more, is what keeps interest in some things alive.
Our interest in others frequently doesn’t go beyond the interest they have in us.
Having a safe place to go back to can make the difference between an interesting and a terrifying journey.
Continued interest is often owed to the failure to understand.
If nothing else, the jack-of-all-trades is more interesting than the master of one.

Week 406 - COURAGE & BRAVERY

Courage impresses more people than it inspires.
Call one brave and the other brazen, but there is courage in both good and evil.
Violence can be learned, but not courage.
A brave man has courage. A fool makes a show of it.
True courage is never easy, not even for the most courageous.
Many more people possess convictions than courage, but without courage convictions are both cheap and irrelevant.
Many deeds attributed to courage are done out of sheer necessity.
Courage alone wins many battles, and loses many as well.
Courage is the frequently missing links between conclusion and action.
Daring is long on thrills and short on achievement.
Advancing is easy compared to standing firm against the tide.
Opportunities for bravery are many, and often exceed the need for them.
More often than not, a brave front is but pride and vanity.
Everybody wants to be brave; few are eager to prove it.
No man really knows how brave he is until under fire.
Brave talk is cheap and often quite useful.
Bravery is a quality, fearlessness a deficiency.
More people can than dare.

Week 407 - HEROISM

Every nation needs heroes, and will conjure them if it doesn’t have them.
Celebrity depends on publicity, but a hero is a hero whether anyone knows it or not.
No hero is a hero to everyone.
Heroism is one way to the top. But staying on top requires more than being heroic.
There is room for only so many heroes, no matter how many competitors.
One may aspire to heroism, but it is fate that chooses and makes heroes.
Heroism is seldom an action preceded by reflection.
Heroism raises expectations more reliably than it reaps rewards.
War often makes heroism of what is crime in peacetime.
In war, victory makes heroism out of crime, and defeat crime out of heroism.
Celebrating its war heroes is part of every nation’s denial of its own war crimes.
The more heroes, the worse the statistics of survival.
Heroism is admired much more than it is emulated.
Many heroes are accidental or reluctant heroes, but heroes nonetheless.
Many heroes are conscripts before, and become volunteers only after they are recognized.
A true hero is a hero to others, not to himself. He obeys his heart and his conscience, and is not in pursuit of glory.

Week 408 - FEAR, COWARDICE, & CAUTION, PART 1

Fear saves lives, but does not improve the quality of life.
Forgiveness may lure wrongdoers back to the straight and narrow, but it is fear that keeps them there.
Many things are universally feared, but few are universally respected. Fear, not respect, is a common human denominator.
Many fears are called atavistic, but many of them are as valid today as they ever were.
Much aggression is but an expression of fear.
Fear is an unwelcome but often useful guest.
The flag is waved more often out of fear than with pride.
The coward’s worst sins are the sins of omission.
A coward is always more afraid than threatened.
Confronting a coward is safe, but turning one’s back on him is not.
Rationalization may trail bravery; it precedes cowardice.
Fearlessness earns glowing eulogies, but caution lives to hear them.
However careful and circumspect, caution is never without a blind spot.
Caution is a concession hope and expectations make to fear and doubts.
Caution that is followed by questions proceeds at a deliberate pace, but one that follows them is often too late.

Week 409 - FEAR, COWARDICE, & CAUTION, PART 2

He who is feared has good reasons to be afraid.
Fear can be more destructive than conflict, and is sometimes the reason for the latter.
Fear is more catching than hope.
Being afraid is frequently the price of being alert.
Like mushrooms after the rain, premonitions and omens grow most abundant in the wake of fear.
Many more people live under siege than are under attack.
The bigger the stick the more palatable the carrot.
Flight survives fright; paralysis may not.
In a coward, the price of pride is high.
Among civilians, cowardice is a flaw; in a soldier, a punishable offence.
Some are timid, but more have been intimidated.
Timidity driven to desperation turns easily to aggression.
Most difficult to intimidate are those who must be kept intimidated.
Caution is better at improving the odds against failure than for success.
Accompanied by caution, courage is often suspected or accused of timidity or cowardice.
Caution slows ambition. It also makes it go farther.
Extreme caution is either a perennial laggard or mired in place.

Week 410 - DANGERS & RISKS

The uninformed know of fewer dangers than the informed, but meet more of them.
For every real danger, there are many possible ones, and even more imaginary ones.
Courage confronts danger; fear avoids it.
It often takes fear to reduce danger.
Interesting is mostly innocuous; revealing much less so.
Many warnings are overlooked, but many more are ignored.
Less ominous than threats, warnings are nonetheless usually ignored with no less impunity.
In emergencies, the gap narrows between what people can and will do.
Planning for emergencies will on occasion invite them.
Nothing is risk-free, including not taking risks.
Some have more to risk and some less, but that is seldom what makes them more or less risk-averse.
Courting danger for the sake of thrills is short on returns and long on risks.
Explanations are sometimes offered at the risk of being understood.
Seeking the truth can be risky; finding it even more so.
To think for oneself and behave accordingly is done at the risk of being considered a troublemaker.
Many risks are calculated, but the calculus is often wrong.

Week 411 - SAFETY & PROTECTION

Strength is good protection, but there is more safety in being out of reach.
To believe and feel strongly is safer than to act accordingly.
To stand out may have more appeal, but to blend in is safer.
In time, any refuge becomes a prison in addition to providing protection.
No refuge is a refuge forever.
In theory, burying one’s head in the sand provides no protection. In practice, it occasionally does.
No disguise provides enough protection to entirely banish apprehension.
A city with gates wide open can still have formidable defenses, and a fortress with its gates shut tight can be virtually defenseless.
A man’s honor and pride protect others from him more than they protect him from others.
Much of what is meant for protection is as likely to be used for aggression.
A shelter and a shield may provide protection from without, but give none from within.
Protecting oneself is innate. Protecting others, except in the case of a mother protecting her child, is largely taught and learned.
Value may or may not assure protection for something, but a price tag and ownership will.
In any society,the price of better protection is usually less freedom.
Those who provide protection against outsiders are usually best kept outside as well.
More than it is apparent, the protected in some ways also protect the protectors.
Protection against others is much easier than protection against oneself.
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you” is often true, but “what doesn’t know you won’t hurt you” is somewhat more accurate.

Week 412 - WAR

In every war, multitudes die and are maimed for ideals, principles, beliefs, and interests that are not their own.
The more and more heinous the war crimes, the more medals, ribbons, badges, and memorials are invented to cover them up.
In wars, every defeat starts with victory speeches.
Unfurled with pride and sometimes with arrogance in peacetime, the flag is waved in defiance and with fear in wartime.
An economy that thrives on destruction, i.e., on war, is no better than a ghoul that grows fat on the flesh of its victims.
In wars, the winning side is the side likely to have committed more crimes.
War criminal and war hero are largely interchangeable terms, and only fortunes of war determine who is who.
In war, only a fool assumes the enemy is humane and honorable.
There is no right and wrong in wars, no innocent and guilty, but only winner and loser. And that it is otherwise is only pretense.
In wartime, it is more practical to look for allies than for friends.
In war, right and wrong are at best pretexts and excuses.
For the victor, a war becomes history; for the loser, it is unfinished business.
War is an argument where one proves oneself right by winning, and the opponent wrong by defeating him, and by prosecuting, convicting, and punishing him to leave no doubt about it.
In war crime courts, judges and criminals are synonyms for the victorious and the defeated.
Whether nations have armies because there are wars, or there are wars because they have armies is debatable.
In wars, the failure of words is followed and compounded by the failure of swords.
In a cruel irony of war, many of those who could not make a difference by living succeed in making it by dying.
In war, there are only enemies, allies, and neutrals. There are no friends.
Bedrooms, not battlefields, are where demographic wars are won.

Week 413 - PEACE, NEUTRALITY, & FENCE-SITTING

People can have poor opinions of one another, be fully aware of it, and still be able to live and work peacefully side by side as long as they don’t voice them.
We want peace and friendship, and we want to remember past conflicts and injustices. And the two often do not go together.
For better or for worse, there is more peace and harmony in avoiding than in resolving conflicts.
In human society, it is difficult to say whether peace is a respite from war, or war a respite from peace.
Rationalization and unquestioning acceptance are what makes it possible for many of our beliefs to coexist in peace.
A man entirely at peace with himself is either a paragon of rectitude or a complete scoundrel. Or a moron.
The less we are at peace with ourselves, the less we can hope to be at peace with the world.
Wherever there is life peace is tenuous and transitory.
Coexistence takes different forms, including both harmony and conflict.
On both sides of the conflict, a neutral is a sympathizer of the opposing side.
In neutral territory self-interest is served first, and sympathies second.
The closer the resolution of a conflict, the more is neutrality tested.
Fence-sitter: one who perches on neutrality as a bargaining position for getting a better deal.
The less balance of power, the fewer fence-sitters.
Normally the target of brickbats from both sides, the fence-sitter is accorded undivided respect when the fence happens to be the pivot on which the outcome of the conflict turns.

Week 414 - CONFLICTS, PART 1

In an old conflict, who started it is no longer relevant, but attributing the blame for it never ends.
Where reason cannot reconcile people or resolve a conflict, mutual interests often will.
Conflicts bring out in people both the worst and the best, the first as a rule, and the second as an exception.
In terms of decorum, standards, control, and scruples, the progression in conflicts is as a rule from better to worse rather than the opposite.
The solution to many racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts is not in eliminating differences but in realizing that being different is not necessarily the problem.
Conflicts are much more between smart and smarter and dumb and dumber than between smart and dumb.
The meek may not fight for more, but are much more likely to fight to keep what they have.
Like a fire that regenerates the forest, a fight sometimes clears the air much better than accommodation and compromise.
Most battles are already won and lost before the battle is joined.
Many battles are won on the battlefield only to be lost in victory’s wake.
Aggression is a frequent response of those who only feel threatened.
The more it is delayed, the more retaliation looks like aggression.
A confrontation with someone stronger reveals in many a bully a very amenable person.
Few endeavors are more challenging than proving strength without violence.
Its bad name notwithstanding, obstruction is often more principled than collaboration.

Biographical Note

Dr. Radovic was born in former Yugoslavia. His early education was in France and Yugoslavia. He spent World War II under Nazi occupation, followed by several years under the Titoist communist regime in Yugoslavia, where he studied Law and Civil Engineering. He escaped from behind the Iron Curtain in 1951, and worked in Western Europe and in South Africa before coming to the United States and completing doctoral studies (Industrial and Management Engineering) at Columbia University in New York City. In 1965 he joined the United Nations and served in various capacities relating in the main to economic development and cooperation and involving extensive international travel. During this period he also taught at Columbia a graduate course on problems of industrialization in less developed countries. He retired from the U.N. as Director of the Department for Special Political Questions, Regional Cooperation, Decolonization and Trusteeship. Dr. Radovic resides on the West Coast, and divides his time between the U.S., Canada and, occasionally, Australia. He is currently working on a new manuscript.

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