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

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The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
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A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
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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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A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
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Every moment is nothing without end.
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Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt.
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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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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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Solitude is the profoundest fact
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What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches.
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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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Light is time thinking about itself.
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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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The woman who died night after night and her dying was a long goodbye, a train that never left.
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
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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.
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Whatever is not stone is light
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By diminishing the value of silence, publicity has also diminished that of language. The two are inseparable: knowing how to speak has always meant knowing how to keep silent, knowing that there are times when one should say nothing.
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