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Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.

Octavio Paz

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Octavio Paz
Age: 84 †
Born: 1914
Born: March 31
Died: 1998
Died: April 2
Diplomat
Essayist
Lyricist
Philosopher
Poet
Politician
Translator
Writer
Mexico City
Mexico
Octavio Paz Lozano
Changes
Possibility
Turn
Democracy
Justice
Strengthen
Alone
Inseparable
Turns
Defend
Change
Diversity

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Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
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There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.
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I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.
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Man does not speak because he thinks he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.
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Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
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What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
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Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.
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Eroticism is first and foremost a thirst for otherness. And the supernatural is the supreme otherness. This is perhaps the most noble aim of poetry, to attach ourselves to the world around us, to turn desire into love, to embrace, finally what always evades us, what is beyond, but what is always there – the unspoken, the spirit, the soul.
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Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.
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Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
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Every moment is nothing without end.
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Deserve your dream.
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What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
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To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes to hear it is to see it with our ears.
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Loving means getting rid of names.
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To fight evil is to fight ourselves.
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The world is born when two people kiss
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Whatever is not stone is light
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Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows.
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