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.
Octavio PazRead
For a man of my generation, our century has been a long intellectual and political struggle in favor of freedom.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the struggle for freedom experienced by individuals in a particular generation.
Octavio Paz emphasizes the significant and prolonged battle for intellectual and political freedom faced by his generation. He speaks to the collective experience of those who have fought against oppression and for the rights that allow individuals to think, express, and govern themselves freely.
Themes
FreedomStrugglePoliticalIntellectualGeneration
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about civil rights, one might quote Octavio Paz to highlight the importance of freedom.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes βBy suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
Octavio PazRead
The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.
Octavio PazRead
Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.
Octavio PazRead
If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
Octavio PazRead
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 PazRead
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It is curious to note how fragile the memory is, even for the important times in one's life. This is, moreover, what explains the fortunate fantasy of history.
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The United States was founded on the idea that all people are endowed with inalienable rights, and that principle has allowed us to work to perfect our union at home while standing as a beacon of hope to the world. Today, that principle is embodied in agreements Americans helped forge - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and treaties against torture and genocide - and it unites us with people from every country and culture.
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As Kierkegaard was the first to suggest, we can never know where our prayers are likely to go nor from whom the answers will come. When we think we are nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil.
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There have been men before who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself, as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.
C. S. LewisRead
...it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.
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I don't accept ideologies that are not a product of consensus. I don't have an ideology, but I do have a sense of what's right and what's wrong.
Ruben BladesRead