Octavio Paz Quotes

Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.

A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

Societies perish when people forget where they come from.

A lot of people may not read the history of their own country, but they carry on memories transmitted by previous generations. They're trying to achieve something, [they] have their mission and anger -- all this is fed by past experience of history.

A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.

A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world.

We've got to know our history. We have to be able to bring our children to a place that they can be proud of.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.

History is information. Memory is part of your identity.

A nation creates itself not just with what it remembers, but with what it forgets.

A nation is a work of art and a work of time.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

History is a novel whose author is the people.

No nation is formed within a night, one generation's era of even two. A nation can be described as the continuous string of many generations that time, this pitiless, thoughtless sword of nature, separates their physical connections along the course of their history.

Any nation that forgets its past cannot have a future.

History is not the past. History is the present. We carry our history with us.

Commemorations can stimulate debate, which will ultimately lead to a greater understanding of the events of our 'through-other' history and to shape a better future.

Culture survives in smaller spaces - not in the history books that erect monuments to the nation's grand history but in cafes and cinema houses, village squares, and half-forgotten libraries.

There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future.