Armenian Quotes

The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed. ~ Chris Hedges

All Romani dialects – about 60 in all - contain Armenian words, proof if you will that the Lom Bosha passed through Armenia in the early 11th century, trading spices along the Great Silk Road, that network of ancient trade routes connecting China with the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The Romani traded Armenian carpets, silk, dyes, lapis lazuli and tin, and it's no surprise that five capitals of Armenia are on The Great Silk Road. ~ Karl Wiggins

The Armenian Genocide is such a controversial and very sensitive issue because the Turkish and Armenian people disagree about the facts of what actually happened. I know how strongly Armenians feel about the Genocide, and how it's never been recognised. At the same time, I do not hold today's generation of people accountable. ~ Khloe Kardashian

Moreover, as the leadership of the House confirmed last year, the Administration remains opposed to a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide due to Turkish objections. This approach sends absolutely the wrong signal to Turkey and to the rest of the world. ~ Patrick J. Kennedy

I am a Bard..."
(From Avetik Isaakian, Armenian Poetry)

I am a bard – I am a heaven bird,
I need no any richness of the world.

I love a flower and so charming lass
In aromatic springs that never pass.

I love a whisper, very gentle and long,
And, in full silence, a despondent song. ~ Anna Akhmatova

From that high up, language or the lack of it didn't matter much. The swirling currents of people were way better than anything on TV. Even on cable. Except, possibly, the Armenian Channel. ~ Julia Claiborne Johnson

My uncle Khosrove became very irritated and shouted, It's no harm. What is the loss of a horse? Haven't we all lost the homeland? What is this crying over a horse? ~ William, Saroyan

Oh Shnorhk, how beautifully you speak Armenian, the third thing I miss most about you. The second thing I miss most about you: how beautifully you play."
Shnorhk not say anything. What trying to say only take away. Shnorhk just scald throat with more tea and eat cake after cake.
Grateful still, in the end, that Mnatsagan, always kind, is kind enough not to say the first thing he miss so much. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Other human rights atrocities from African slavery to the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides are all of course to be remembered, but diluting their particularity or comparing degrees of evil does no good. ~ Jeremy Corbyn

And then the Turkish gendarmes and zaptieh went from Armenian house to Armenian house confiscating weapons or anything they thought might be one. If possible, the priest would come to warn each family that the gendarmes or the zaptieh were coming so they could prepare. The zaptieh knocked on Armenian doors any time of day or night, and they preferred coming at night. They came to the Kazanjians, and the Arslanians, and the Meugerditchians, and to the Hovsepians and Haroutiunians and to the Shekerlemedjians. And finally, they came to our house in the evening after dinner. Three men in dark brown uniforms walked into the foyer and through the courtyard and said to my mother that if she did not hand over every gun in the house, we would be killed. ~ Peter Balakian

From May until October, the Ottoman Government pursued methodically a plan of extermination far more hellish than the worst possible massacre. Orders for deportation of the entire Armenian population to Mesopotamia were dispatched to every province of Asia Minor. These orders were explicit and detailed. No hamlet was too insignificant to be missed. The news was given by town criers that every Armenian was to be ready to leave at a certain hour for an unknown destination. ~ Herbert Adams Gibbons

The Armenians will willingly harbor
revolutionaries, arrange for their entertainment and the furthering of their ends. The pride of race brings about many singularities and prompts the Armenians to prey on missionaries, Jesuits, consuls and European traveler with rapacity and ingratitude. The poor Armenians will demand assistance in a loud tone, yet will seldom give thanks for a donation. Abuse of Consular officers and missionaries is only a part of the stock-in-trade of the extra-Armenian press. ~ Mark Sykes

Three apples fell from Heaven: one for the teller of a story, one for the listener, and the third for the one who 'took it to heart. ~ Armenian Folk Tales

The association of Mount Ararat and Noah, the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections over fifty years for alleviating their miseries-all cumulate to impress the name Armenia on the front of the American mind. ~ Herbert Hoover

The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war.. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I was raised with a huge Armenian influence, always hearing stories of Armenia, celebrating Armenian holidays. ~ Kim Kardashian

I'm half-Armenian. Even though my grandparents did not discuss the genocide, and my father - like many sons and daughters of immigrants - wanted to be as 'American' as possible, I was always aware of it. How could I not be? ~ Chris Bohjalian

Armenian Cognac

A bottle of cognac from Yerevan
is on my kitchen table
as closed as that history
and as silent
If I broke it down I'd lose a hundred years
of love
and if I opened it the ancestors
hanging here in black and white
would come down from the walls
to have a glass with me
I know a history that's been forgotten
and I know why that bottle of cognac
stands with such singular pride....

If I broke it now I'd lose a hundred years
of my people's history ~ Najwan Darwish

Adolf von Gordon's last words at the trial are ironic: I should be far from passing a final judgment on Talat the man. What can be said objectively I said at the start. But I do wish to state one more thing: like many of his comrades, he certainly worked for the extermination of the Armenian people in order to create a purely pan-Turkish state; he certainly here used means that seem intolerable to us Europeans. ~ Eric Bogosian

What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance. ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

The Lebanese government has officially recognized the Armenian genocide, but nowhere is there any official memorial to the victims of the World War I famine. ~ Louis Farshee

I am Armenian, so of course I am obsessed with laser hair removal! Arms, bikini, legs, underarms ... my entire body is hairless. ~ Kim Kardashian

But I am Armenian and I understand what it is to lose a country and lose a family and have massacres and genocides and everything against my people. ~ Andrea Martin

It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give. ~ William, Saroyan

The world saw and understood that, when it comes to the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations, they have to deal not just with Armenia with its three million population, but with the ten million Armenians. And let no one ignore the fact that, contrary to any slogans, the Armenian nation is united in its goals and is strong with its sons and daughters. ~ Serzh Sargsyan

The AXA and New York Life settlements are important building blocks not only toward seeking financial recovery for the losses resulting from the Armenian Genocide but also in our ultimate goal, which is for Turkey and the US to officially acknowledge the genocide. ~ Mark Geragos

I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ecstacy, nor enjoyment that Masha
excited in me, but a painful though pleasant sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined
as a dream. For some reason I felt sorry for myself, for my grandfather and for the
Armenian, even for the girl herself, and I had a feeling as though we all four had lost
something important and essential to life which we should never find again. ~ Anton Chekhov

We create ourselves to be almost blind walking dead, where we are led by both negative aspects of religion and cultural conformity to gloss over people. We gloss over the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. We gloss over the Japanese internment camps that most likely would have been far worse had the war continued longer. We often marginalize those besides the ethnic and Jewish descent that died in the Nazi holocaust of World war II. ~ L.B. Ó Ceallaigh

It is generally not known in the world that, in the years preceding 1916, there was a concerted effort made to eliminate all the Armenian people, probably one of the greatest tragedies that ever befell any group. And there weren't any Nuremberg trials. ~ Jimmy Carter

And I realized more and more that the Armenian story was not so much one of massacre and persecution, as survival. ~ Philip Marsden

The fallout caused by denial was inherited by later generations of Armenians, linking them to the fateful days of 1915, and compelling them to set the record straight. ~ Michael Bobelian

an appointment with a local property tycoon who got into trouble with some Armenian gang members because he didn't want to pay them ~ L.J. Shen

[In response to atrocities against Armenians] the British government issued a joint memo with France and Russia on 24 May 1915. The first draft, proposed by Russia, contained the phrase "crimes against Christianity and civilization," but France and Britain feared this would offend their own colonial Muslim populations and succeeded in changing the phrase to "crimes against humanity." This paved the way for the concept to assume its place after the war as one of the most important categories in international law. ~ Taner Akcam

It was at first communicated to you that the Government, by order of the Jemiet had decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey ... An end must be put to their existence, however criminal the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious scruples. ~ Talaat Pasha

He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian. ~ Woody Allen

I am ashamed of my nation. ~ Djemal Pasha

It's time to recognise the Armenian Genocide. ~ Kim Kardashian

In those days you could identify a person's nationality by smell. Lying on her back with eyes closed, Desdemona could detect the telltale oniony aroma of a Hungarian woman on her right, and the raw-meat smell of an Armenian on her left. (And they, in turn, could peg Desdemona as a Hellene by her aroma of garlic and yogurt.) ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

My lady had the body of a siren, the face of a goddess, and the mind of an Armenian camel dealer. ~ Louis L'Amour

At least forty million Americans can't read and write, according to this morning's New York Times. That is six times as many illiterates as there are people of Armenian descent anywhere! So many of them and so few of us! ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it. ~ Alan Hovhaness

The Armenian genocide was a horrific illustration of the convulsions that could seize a multi-ethnic polity trying to mutate from empire into nation state. ~ Niall Ferguson

The first genocide of the 21st century was against you, the Armenian people. ~ Pope Francis

I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are. I tried to forget Armenia but I couldn't do it. ~ William, Saroyan

In general, those who resort to mass murder on a collective scale always put forward the justification that they acted on behalf of the nation. ~ Taner Akcam

800,000 Armenian deportees were actually killed ... by holding the guilty accountable the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past. ~ Djemal Pasha

The Armenian genocide was also a Holocaust, but it wasn't my Holocaust. ~ Edgar Hilsenrath

If there was wisdom in beards, all goats would be prophets. ~ Armenian Proverb

I'm Armenian, but I'm very fair and I look white ... I would always get such hate about it. ~ Khloe Kardashian

We didn't deny the obvious,
but we didn't entirely accept it either.
I mean, we said hello to it each morning
in the foyer. We patted its little head
as it made a mess in the backyard,
but we never nurtured it. Many nights the obvious showed up
at our bedroom door, in its pajamas,
unable to sleep, in need of a hug,
and we just stared at it like an Armenian,
or even worse - hid beneath the covers
and pretended not to hear its tiny sobs. ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

The Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor. The clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be. ~ Winston Churchill

Like a child in new boots leaping from puddle to puddle, this view sees history as leapfrogging from one bloodbath to the next, from World War One to World War Two to the Cold War, from the Armenian genocide to the Jewish genocide to the Rwandan genocide, from Robespierre to Lenin to Hitler. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The Adoption When Paul Jobs was mustered out of the Coast Guard after World War II, he made a wager with his crewmates. They had arrived in San Francisco, where their ship was decommissioned, and Paul bet that he would find himself a wife within two weeks. He was a taut, tattooed engine mechanic, six feet tall, with a passing resemblance to James Dean. But it wasn't his looks that got him a date with Clara Hagopian, a sweet-humored daughter of Armenian immigrants. It was the fact that he and his friends had a car, unlike ~ Walter Isaacson

One night, unable to sleep, I tiptoed into the hallway and overheard my grandfather telling a table of acquaintances about the expensive Armenian cognac with which he had once plied the surgeon who was going to remove my grandmother's gallbladder the next morning. They drank so much tat the surgeon was still drunk when he picked up the scalpel. The table roared, though my grandmother did not. ~ Boris Fishman

Moe was a triple threat."
"He could sing, dance, and act?"
She shook her head. "He could speak Armenian, saddle break a stallion, and pass for a female in drag. ~ Marisha Pessl

[Armenian] is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it. ~ Lord Byron

she's part Armenian, ~ Dahlia Adler

Perfidy and brutal force thwarted opportunities for calling President Wilson's Arbitral Award to life. Nevertheless, its significance is not to be underestimated: through that decision the aspiration of the Armenian people for the lost Motherland had obtained vital and legal force. ~ Serzh Sargsyan

A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

The legacy of the Armenian Genocide is woven into the fabric of America. ~ Adam Schiff

I always have mini bottles of Unbreakable, the fragrance I did with my husband. I'm Armenian, so I'm oily and always have blotting papers. ~ Khloe Kardashian

What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America. ~ William, Saroyan

Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the '70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced. ~ Serj Tankian

The Crusaders come to one immediate decision. They decide that the Orthodox Greek Christians, the Georgian Christians, the Armenian Christians and the Jacobite Christians no longer could hold services in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Only the Latin rite could be celebrated in Jerusalem. ~ Paul L. Williams

He was only thirty-eight. His body was clean, well-fed, and benign. He had all his teeth. A fresh Armenian joke stirred in his head like a child in its mother's womb. He thought life was wonderful. ~ Ilya Ilf

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters. ~ William, Saroyan

Silvanus, the camp prefect, took a step forward. I heard his voice every morning after parade, but had never listened to the tones of it as I did now. He was not afraid, that much was clear; he was angry.
"Pathetic. I should cashier you all now and destroy your Eagles." Silvanus spoke quietly; we had to strain to hear his voice. You could have heard the stars slide across the sky, we were so still and so silent. "If General Corbulo were here, he would destroy you. He dismissed half of the Fifth and the Tenth and sent them home. The rest are billeted in tents in the Armenian highlands with barley meal for fodder. He intends to make an army of them, to meet Vologases when he comes. I intend the same and therefore you will be treated the same as your betters in better legions. You will be proficient by the spring, or you will be dead." His gaze raked us, and we wondered which of us might die that night for the crime of being ineffectual. His voice rocked us. "To that end, you will spend the next three months in tents in the Mountains of the Hawk that lie between us and the sea. One hundred paces above the snow line, each century will determine an area suitable for three months' stay and build its own base camp. You will alternate along the mountains' length so that each century of the Fourth has a century of the Twelfth to either side, and vice versa. Each century will defend and maintain its own stocks against the men of the opposing legion; you are encouraged to avail you ~ M.C. Scott

But then what is the alternative to trying to tell the truth about the Holocaust, the Famine, the Armenian genocide, the injustice of dispossession in the Americas and Australia? That everyone should be reduced to silence? To pretend that the Holocaust was the work merely of a well-armed minority who didn't do as much harm as is claimed-and likewise, to argue that the Irish Famine was either an inevitability or the fault of the Irish-is to say that both were mere unreliable rumors, and not the great motors of history they so obviously proved to be. It suited me to think so at the time, but still I believe it to be true, that if there are going to be areas of history which are off-bounds, then in principle we are reduced to fudging, to cosmetic narrative. ~ Thomas Keneally