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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
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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
Fact
Operating
Facts
Image
Reality
Lies
Also
Meaning
Power
Expression
Way
Technology
World
Lying
Nihilism
Perfect
Lacks
More quotes by Octavio Paz
I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken?
Octavio Paz
Light is time thinking about itself.
Octavio Paz
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.
Octavio Paz
Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
Octavio Paz
Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.
Octavio Paz
It is the Revolution, the magical word, the word that is going to change everything, that is going to bring us immense delight and a quick death.
Octavio Paz
Every moment is nothing without end.
Octavio Paz
Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.
Octavio Paz
Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
Octavio Paz
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
A civilization that denies death ends by denying life.
Octavio Paz
Solitude is the profoundest fact
Octavio Paz
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
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.
Octavio Paz
For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
Octavio Paz
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz
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
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.
Octavio Paz
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.
Octavio Paz
The universe unfolds in the body, which is its mirror and its creature.
Octavio Paz