The Balkans have been called the "gunpowder depot of Europe." And Europeans at this moment are paying more attention to the gunpowder that exists here than to the name of the gunpowder depot. Names do no harm, only to those who lose them and have nothing to trade except names.

The more glorious the names are, the better price they fetch in the black market of names. Skopje wants the name Macedonia for the same reason we refuse to give it to them. They know they could trade it, just as we trade the glorious name Greece, which if we didn't have, no one would lend us, being such useless people as we are. Our name is our financial guarantee.

We say: give something to the blind man! Do not look at him being disabled. His ancestors, however, had such eyes, you see! They pierced the heavens and reached where the Ideas of Plato were hidden from every profane gaze of the ignorant and the foolish.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]