Quote

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

Octavio Paz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Diversity
Change
Changes
Possibility
Turn
Democracy
Justice
Strengthen
Inseparable
Alone
Defend
Turns

More quotes by Octavio Paz

Image
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.
Octavio Paz
Image
Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move today is today, always is today.
Octavio Paz
Image
Watching I watch myself, what I see is my creation as though entering through my eyes perception is conception into an eye more crystal clear water of thoughts, what I watch watches me, I am the creation of what I see
Octavio Paz
Image
The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
Octavio Paz
Image
Deserve your dream.
Octavio Paz
Image
When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings
Octavio Paz
Image
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes to hear it is to see it with our ears.
Octavio Paz
Image
Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
Octavio Paz
Image
Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
Octavio Paz
Image
Enormous and solid but swaying, beaten by the wind but chained, murmur of a million leaves against my window. Riot of trees, surge of dark green sounds. The grove, suddenly still, is a web of fronds and branches.
Octavio Paz
Image
Whatever is not stone is light
Octavio Paz
Image
Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt.
Octavio Paz
Image
Images, memories, fragmentary shapes and forms all those sensations, visions, half-thoughts that appear and disappear in the wink of an eye, as one sets forth to meet.... The path also disappears as I think of it, as I say it.
Octavio Paz
Image
It is always difficult to give oneself up few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.
Octavio Paz
Image
Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone.
Octavio Paz
Image
Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
Octavio Paz
Image
Love is the revelation of the other person's freedom.
Octavio Paz
Image
Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.
Octavio Paz
Image
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz
Image
What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
Octavio Paz