Aphorisms

aka Secular Maxims

aka Aphorisms laipidaires

aka États d’âme

Note: None of the following may be reproduced without the written permission of the author.

Charles Cogan

Undated

It’s mixed, not dire.

Spartan by day, sybarite by night.

It takes but a little to go from fade to imagination.

Re the poem “Litter-bound” etc.

Don’t pay attention to the words. Pay attention to the effect.

NPW – it’s not a perfect world.

--

A meeting is a matter of theater.

The timid are the most resentful.

I am calm to keep from being furious.

What better mark of an intelligence officer that he practice it in a foreign language.

There’s only one thing worse than being at an airport, and that’s being alone at an airport.

The struggle to get calm.

For some people, being on time is a matter of morality.

(An exaggeration but):

Writing isn’t everything.

It’s the only thing.

The sense of the narrative

vs.

The sense of the analysis

Or: chronology vs structure

Cf. the remark of a social scientist “we’ve got to find a principle in all this; otherwise we’ll just be historians.”

The best papers are those that are written out but not read.

If it weren’t for bodily functions we would be less ludicrous than we are.

Life is a tragedy waiting to happen.

God is a chip.

Le pouvoir du verbe.

11 May 84

Learn to agree.

24 Aug 84

Don’t let people put pressure on you. You put pressure on other people.

12 Jan 85

...I bet heaven also will be a disappointment.

With the inevitable samesness that exists, a great need for avoidance of patterns.

4 Aug 85

That élite, bornée fraternité that is the CIA.

19 Sept 85

The polygraph and the confessional.

To others: you people live in a box-less society.

3 Nov 85

Don’t think back.

Don’t think forward.

Think present.

(Prescription for health)

(The Epicurean symbol).

15 Dec 85

If you can’t figure out what it means write it down.

19 Dec 85

Ridiculous airs. Don’t they know they’re going to die?

The most important, after all this parcours, is to have a calm attitude toward death.

27 Feb 86

Ne cédons pas à l’angélisme.

15 Apr 86

Terrorism. To the attacks of the weak against the strong, one must reply with the attacks of the strong against the weak.

...When you realize that the big tough guys are going to wind up little old men.

15 Jun 86

Il se dédouane par la poésie.

21 Aug 86

Existentialism: man is responsible for his own existence.

La retraite, c’est l’avant-mort.

21 Sept 86

Il ne s’agit pas de ceux qui manipulent les terroristes mais de ceux qui les hébergent.

14 Jan 87

CIA: because we’re so devious, we’re the straightest people on earth.

18 Feb 87

The best we can hope for is that we’re not thrown into receivership before we pass from this earth.

Sex, sleep, and foreign languages are the three great involuntaries of our time. Everything else is a voluntary.

Of disappointments: put distance between you and the event (i.e. time).

Information is worthless without sources.

1 Sept 87

America: the phenomenon of the beautiful blimps.

If you don’t have it exactly in mind, write it down.

21 Oct 87

Les fesses ne sont plus rondes.

27 Oct 87

Even dinosaurs get the blues.

28 Oct 87

If you’re stuck with it, flaunt it.

6 Nov 87

Of enmities: you must not think that he likes you. And you must not give him the idea that you do not like him.

At most what we can achieve is tolerable, not what is desirable.

20 Dec 87

Cables rounded at the edges. It is not that one is not tough. It is that one needs not to be stupid.

Of immigration:

Les E.U. (USA)

Personne n’a le monopole.

Dans la foulée, la scoumoune.

1 Jan 88

The after-bath compositions.

Irony is the highest form of tribute.

9 Jan 88

Auto-suppression is necessary for strength.

24 Jan 88

Pay for the euphoria.

26 Mar 88

Les poèmes de la baignoire.

9 May 88

Ne pas tolérer la douleur

C’est nier l’existence.

11 May 88

Of physical ailments:

One must never think that things don’t get better.

5 Jul 88

I hate rain, but I love rain in the face.

Ça finit mal,

C’est ça le drame.

30 Jul 88

La main, passée au visage,

Déride, un instant,

Des soucis de la vie.

Of NSA: The telephone is a dangerous instrument.

14 Aug 88

We are responsible for the sins of our agents.

11 Sept 88

The case officer mentality.

The worst form of discourtesy known to man is being late.

14 Sept 88

I don’t meet people well. I make friends well.

Re Brits (and other foreigners)

...that’s the way they say things.

22 Sept 88

C’est difficile d’être une fausse barbe.

2 Oct 88

The magic of life is that it doesn’t last.

The world would have no magic if it were stasis.

21 Oct 88

Sun is not for taking.

3 Nov 88

“Les savants à la retraite. Cette situation est démentielle. Vous voyez Einstein ou Pasteur partir à la retraite à 68 ans? Les hommes politiques, eux, n’ont pas de limitation d’âge.”

(Interview de Maurice Allais, Paris Match, 3 novembre 1988).

“Lire” June 88, p. 31.

Interview of Anthony Burgess. “Il (Graham Greene) ne réalise pas que le catholicisme, ce n’est pas seulement une religion mais une culture familiale.”

9 Dec 88

Of end of life: none of this is going to be pleasant.

23 Dec 88

...we are never far from death.

4 Jan 89

Rogue states, rogue terrorists:

The irony -- we cannot retaliate in justice; we can only retaliate in war.

...just as there is nothing rational about terrorism, so there is nothing rational about counter-terrorism.

28 Jan 89

Orieux “Talleyrand.”

“Les honneurs, comme des malheurs, ne viennent jamais seuls.”

“bad things happen.”

29 Jan 89

Bonaparte: “obsédé par l’aventure unique de son existence.”

Furet/Ozouf, p. 227.

2 Feb 89

The alternatives are great! I have to die anyway.

11 Feb 89

La CIA:

Nous sommes les vrais incorruptibles.

12 Feb 89

Il y a un déroulement

dans tout.

On ne peut pas rester figé.

17 Feb 89

Victory in Afghanistan.

Nous sommes les vrais incorruptibles, and that is why the war was won. We asked for nothing more than that the Brezhnev Doctrine be confounded. And it has been.

7 Mar 89

The ultimate disappointment is dying.

23 Mar 89

Politics is the art of struggle.

Le problème du Mal. Comment expliquer les actions de Dieu.

My article of faith is

E pluribus unum.

It is the pluralism which has

made us great.

5 Apr 89

What the hell is age?

Age is a chronology.

3 May 89

La vie, c’est une série d’événements (expériences) qu’on doit subir.

7 May 89

Life is a life of struggle and luxury.

“S’il n’est pas toujours utile de dire tout à tous, il est indispensable de dire à tous la même chose. La confiance est à ce prix, et je n’ai jamais rien obtenu, ou du moins tenté d’obtenir, sans la confiance.”

Jean Monnet, d’après André Fontaine, Le Monde, 10 Nov 88.

14 May 89

Je me dirige cruellement vers un destin inconnu.

America

The élan of the future.

The mindless, traditionless

Ēlan of the future.

The four commandments of a second existence.

Thou shalt not beg

Thou shalt not consult

Thou shalt not commerce

Thou shalt not garden.

22 May 89

Do not be afraid.

Think of destiny.

24 May 89

Of the near-end of life:

It’s going away.

Cultivate a sublime indifference.

31 May 89

(Preamble) I am a man of few words, and many thoughts.

7 Jun 89

Réflections sur une surchauffe (i.e. caffeine, etc.).

16 Jun 89

He’s so good with people he is virtually totally ineffective.

16 Jun 89

The pre-r.v. option: be prepared for anything to go wrong.

Youth: untold engouements.

25 Jun 89

Arrival at Harvard University, 1989:

Scholar-in-resonance.

“…le refus français de payer le prix de la démocratie.” Jean-Marie Colombani, Le Monde, 24 juin 89.

(à propos des “affaires”).

Research – it’s learning something about which you know next to nothing.

“I love you with tears”: the relation between love and death.

9 Jul 89

As politics is the art of the possible, intelligence is the art of the possible.

17 Jul 89

The Felix Bloch case. The grand public doesn’t realize that sloppy tradecraft is easier.

19 Aug 89

The Lebanese are the most loveable people on earth.

But that’s not a substitute for U.S. policy.

22 Aug 89

Escape from the ordinary,

The name of an outfitter,

The problem of life.

5 Sept 89

Regarding arrangements concerning the Kennedy School: go with the flou.

10 Sept 89

Re media coverage as intelligence input. If you don’t know what people are thinking, listen to what they say.

Cambridge:

This is not our home away from home. This is our home away from heaven.

18 Sept 89

The hostage rescue mission: the analysts, the mavericks, the Bob Headley’s of this world who were talking about the dust storms in southern Iran at that time of year: how to listen to the voices crying in the wilderness.

The takeover of the Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and the failure to assign reponsibility for the act: how we were fooled by the “nebuleuse.”

20 Sept 89

La CIA. A great deal of insensate prejudice.

For anyone seeking knowledge, drinking beforehand is a great mistake.

The difference between Harvard and an ordinary town is that there are a lot of young people smiling to themselves because they are young.

Aphorisms is my stunt.

I come from a world in which one is used to things going wrong. (Cf. the pre-r.v. option: be prepared for anything to go wrong).

29 Sept 89

Harvard Square.

They use the ghetto-blaster because they’ve got an invisibility problem.

Those who talk of intelligence failures often have have a failure of intelligence.

7 Nov 89

The posterity trade (viz. writing).

14 Nov 89

Writing is the ultimate dignity.

24 Nov 89

André Fontaine in Le Monde, sur les Maronites:

“ils ne se laisseraient pas ramener à l’état des dhimmis, de simples protégés de la Syrie ou d’un état islamiste.”

29 Nov 89

’68 reminiscent of ’89: crowds disperse le pouvoir.

18 Dec 89

Only the things of the head count.

11 Jan 90

Panama. They’ve leaked covert action out of existence.

21 Jan 90

Anything that requires will, I will do.

7 Feb 90

Creativity is more difficult than technicity.

Pressure is what makes the world go round.

10 Feb 90

I’ve reached the age of 62, and I’ve said constantly to myself, “And to think I get paid for doing this.”

2 Mar 90

Afin d’enseigner

Il faut exaggérer.

3 Mar 90

Not going anywhere but straight to the grave.

Go gossamer.

31 Mar 90

Why die for Lithuania?

We remember South Carolina. 1832…1860.

(But: South Carolina voluntarily joined the Union. Lithuania did not).

7 Apr 90

Why? Because writing is superior to everything else.

8 Apr 90

A propos of stereotypes:

The infinite variety of individuals.

13 Apr 90

On academic guidance:

Above all, people need encouragement

26 Apr 90

Never think of what you were

Never think of what you have become

Only think of prospects.

11 May 90

Only the Jewish profs dare to stand up aggressively to the blacks over the Harvard Law School black prof hiring issue; only the black profs dare to stand up to the Jews on the question of consistent support to the State of Israel and its policies.

14 May 90

Unpleasant as it is, there is always something more unpleasant than the truth.

Korea, Vietnam.

Unsatisfactory war.

Unsatisfactory policy.

3 June 90

Creativity vs. technicity.

Creativity must replace technicity.

8 July 90

Do the remembered thing first.

21 July 90

The DO officer. Our lives have been lives of sweet exploitation.

1 Sept 90

All friendships are friendships of opportunity?

17 Jan 91

All knowledge is derivative.

5 Mar 91

If you don’t have fun at it, don’t do it.

24 May 01

With growing older, every day is different.

8 Jun 91

You have got to realize that creativity breeds gloom.

Not to be depressed is an act of voluntarism.

9 Jun 91

Non-gloom is a voluntary.

9 Jul 91

I am not a man of conviction. I am a man of observation.

23 Jul 91

The thing that matters is not mattering about time.

27 Jul 91

Lacouture, PMF, p. 273. “On est plus souvent dupé par défiance que par confiance.”

11 Sept 01

Will somebody tell those Jihad folks there’s no paradise up there?

Ready to take casualties. Again

--

Getting the REM. (rapid eye movement)

Is a question of when.

8 Oct 91

…sometimes pure nationalism takes over.

15 Oct 91

Touch paper once.

15 Nov 91

Writing is gloriously in the blood.

11 Jan 92

Cultivate an excessive calm.

27 Nov 92

Aron on Clausewitz: the verity of resourcefulnes.

11 Jan 93

Striding high at sixty-five.

22 Mar 93

We’re having to pay for a career spent having fun.

12 Mar 95

The Yin and Yang of Stability and Disruption.

18 Nov 95

…It was about the butchering of two citizens going unpunished, to the accompaniment of a peacock pavane in the courtroom.

(O.J. Simpson trial).

11 Dec 95

J.-F. Deniau:

Une vie sans aventure c’est le commun des mortels.

19 Mar 96

Never refuse a speech.

6 Mar 99

Coffee optimism.

20 Oct 99

The greatest argument in favor of God is that everyone looks different.

27 Jul 00

Camp David II, the Palestinians, and Jerusalem.

They’d rather keep longing for it.

6 Dec 01

Hamas.

Blowing up kids on buses.

Can’t be for national liberation.

Must be for sport.

Our days are so counted

We must spend them together,

11 Sept 02

They got us in our diversity. (The 9/11 attacks)

18 Sept 02

Give me the strength to defy Your supposed authority.

11 Dec 02

The most important thing is not to get mad.

15 Dec 02

A dangerous loss of faith.

23 Dec 02

This is our first post-diagnosis Christmas.

We have a lot not to be thankful for.

--

6 Jan 03

Enforced reading.

12 Jan 03

I tend to see the end of the world approaching when it is nothing worse than the end of my own life.

16 Jan 03

Borrowed time…

On this planet.

28 Feb 03

Patience is the answer. Patience is the key.

16 Mar 03

Cultivate the capacity to be surprised.

2 May 03

Iraq. No terrorism. No weapons of mass desctruction. Just a despicable regime.

14 Dec 03

Saddam’s capture.

The great lesson:

You take a leader out by war.

8 June 04

A profound refractory streak.

17 Jul 04

Nothing matters

You just wait to die.

14 Aug 04

A deathbed incantation:

cruel God.

5 Sept 04

Every day must be different, to lessen the curse of everydayness.

19 Oct 04

“The war on terrorism.”

It's like declaring war on land mines.

24 Nov 04

Thinking about death helps to approach death.

30 Nov 04

Variegated fears.

20 Jan 05

Spin doctors never come clean.

6 Apr 05

I don't think I want to do it over again;

Because I want to know what's next.

28 Sept 05

Advancing toward death.

29 Sept 05

Imperfect bodies.

9 Dec 05

(Death). It’s going to be an unusual experience.

12 Feb 06

We were instructed by our Mother.

20 Feb 06

Love is lawless.

15 Mar 06

Iraq.

Regime change was the key awful decision – regime change without provocation.

10 April 06

Got to take disappointments.

25 Apr 06

The problem remains: the blacks.

Women:

The receptacle mien.

6 June 06

Whatever muses you on.

1 July 06

agnosticism is humility:

I don’t presume to know.

14 July 06

The dream is broken.

22 July 06

The website is a vanity press.

9 Aug 06

Travel has become a drug with us.

2 Oct 06

Terrible problem in the middle years.

Planing out in the later years.

8 Oct 06

Crisis of self-worth.

13 Oct 06

Irrationality of thought precedes the R.E.M.

17 Oct 06

The website vis-à-vis my private reflections. A dialectic.

It’s a question of energy.

17 Nov 06

Day of leaving for Paris.

In a day of non-everydayness, every thing is a new step.

20 Nov 06

Élan vital!

12 Dec 06

Go opaque.

(with people you don’t want to get involved with).

29 Dec 06

Nothing in heat.

1 Jan 07

My blazon:

Voluntarism, on a field of gules.

16 Feb 07

Live with the horrors of life.

23 July 07

Be prepared for anything to go wrong

vs.

Don’t counsel your fears.

26 Jul 07

You don’t realize the depths of the urge until it is over…How much it forms the substratum of one’s life.

3 Aug 07

I’m trying to develop an atitude toward death. An attitude of…indifference?

7 Aug 07

To have a game plan. To have an end-game plan.

19 Aug 07

A time for…checking out.

Le pari de Pascal. Shall I take it?

23 Aug 07

Israel.

All blows are permitted, because of the past.

4 Sept 07

Sleep in the afternoon. Let it ride over.

5 Sept 07

The choice vs. life dilemma.

A handicapped child becomes lovable as he grows up in a family. Should he have been killed at the outset?

30 Sept 07

The mood has struck.

(finishing the paper for Laval University)

10 Oct 07

All God’s chillun got shit.

(Cf. Freud: “Civilization and its Discontents”).

15 Oct 07

All minorities are self-hating.

20 Oct 07

I don’t like to jinx the present by admiring too much the past.

7 Dec 2007

Getting the REM last night.

In such a desert of wakefulness, a sudden oasis of peace.

18 Dec 07

Belief in the supernatural takes one away from the real world in making decisions.

7 Jan 08

Variegated scaredness.

19 Jan 08

Take away the qualifyer; take away the superlative.

(Editing)

20 Jan 08

Artiste de mots.

26 Jan 08

…as he passed away into the ether.

29 Feb 08

The tragedy that awaits us.

29 March 2008

All of this is going to go away.

It all comes from the mother. It’s all mother-wit.

20 May 2008

Why die for Danzig? (WDD), i.e. don’t let yourself get too passionately involved.

7 June 2008

The final decade.

June 10, 2008

Harvard.

“Où s’écoulèrent les jours les plus beaux de ma vie.”

(Paraphrase of Alain Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes: “…cette demeure où s’écoulèrent les jours les plus tourmentés et les plus chers de ma vie – demeure d’où partirent et où revinrent se briser, comme des vagues sur un rocher désert, nos aventures.” (p. 1).

1 July 08

Chapter 1 (“La République de Dieu”)

Pourquoi aimons-nous tellement laisser quelque chose derrière nous?

15 July 08

With advancing age, too many pauses.

People become less angry when they’re older, because they’re weaker.

11 Aug 08

Always renewed until…not renewed.

12 Aug 08

Fidèle à ma vocation: le français.

21 Aug 08

Picture everything.

(in the future).

22 Aug 08

“La République de Dieu”

Part rumination,

Part reminiscence,

Part remonstrance.

23 Aug 08

That’s the thing about the Irish. They can pass almost anywhere.

Who would have thought that Joseph R. Biden, the elegantly dressed, patrician-looking senator from that tax-haven state, Delaware, was from a Joe-Six-Pack Irish Catholic family from Scranton, PA?

Cf. the book, “How the Irish Became White”

24 Aug 08

The decision not to be operated on for a 5.2 aortal aneurism. It’s the functional equivalent of the poem about The Contract.

5 Sept 08

Unusuality.

10 Sept 08

Death is the most reckless experience.

20 Sept 08

“Agent” is what other people do for us.

1 Oct 08

Puerile things.

12 Oct 08

The chance of sex.

28 Oct 08

Everything brings a memory.

2 Nov 08

Savor every moment…because it won’t last.

5 Nov 08

E Pluribus Unum – which is what we are all about as a country – rules the day.

9 Nov 08

The strength of earlier years.

11 Nov 08

The staring-straight-ahead phase.

I’m a snob, but I’m not arrogant.

1 Dec 08

The Bordeaux conference on the privatization of intelligence.

…avec une sorte de gigantisme qui est quintessentiellement américain.

10 Dec 08

Extended life.

11 Dec 08

“Persepolis.” It exposes the never-ending tension between probity and sexuality.

15 Dec 08

Afghanistan 2008. It is not our business how foreign cultures comport themselves.

2 Jan 09

Head games,

Not body games.

3 Jan 09

Bogged in tactical.

4 Jan 09

Aphorisms and multiple meanings.

8 Jan 09

Outliving one’s adversaries.

A temporary satisfaction.

What would I do without our happy home?

9 Jan 09

Cf. “How the Irish Became White”

…dismiss it as a relic of the religious wars.

The last five years are going to be awful.

11 Jan 09

(Health)

Good for my time.

13 Jan 09

In the advancing years, the rhythm of life is choice.

14 Jan 09

Death. It’s the biggest experience in life.

29 Jan 09

Le troisième âge.

I’ve never had such pleasure.

31 Jan 09

Stupor mundi.

7 Feb 09

The blessed life.

9 Feb 09

A propos of the new Administration: tout commencement est decevant.

Speeders: they can be forgiven their level of testosterone.

11 Feb 09

Le français.

Trying to navigate in the medium.

28 Feb 09

Hold back the impatience.

1 Mar 09

…encore un petit moment.

2 Mar 09

I don’t have to do anything. I just have to exist in time.

Le « coconisme ». Un phénomène du temps.

3 Mar 09

Rome. Incredibly moche, in the midst of past grandeur.

18 Mar 09

Energy sharpens the temper.

23 Mar 09

Return from a trip.

Fresh start.

Temps roboratif.

24 Mar 09

You’re being asked to believe when you don’t have any proof.

Unusualness in the midst of everydayness.

8 April 09

Obama. You can’t expect him to be like everyone else.

…that may be why he says the right things.