Octavio Paz Quotes

By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse. The differences in the product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the worlds cultures reflects a corresponding diversity. In the wilds that gave them birth.

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions; life is plurality, death is uniformity.

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

There were about 6,000 languages spoken on this planet at the beginning of the 20th century, there are probably only 600 still widely spoken at the beginning of the 21st century. Together with biodiversity, cultural and linguistic diversity are fading fast.

We need to preserve our cultural peculiarities; however, going to the extreme would lead to cultural isolation

The strength of a culture depends on its capacity to open itself up to other cultures, to integrate itself into them and to integrate them into it.

The question really isn't whether I'm American, Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani, or anything else. I've been shaped by all these people and cultures and I feel quite comfortable among all of them

The fallacies of the Melting Pot theory have also become obvious. Years before the war [WWI] it had become increasingly apparent that the Melting Pot was no longer successfully performing its function; that the American population was losing its homogeneous character; that various nationalities of recent immigrants were forming more and more compact racial "blocs," each bloc tenaciously maintaining its own racial character, customs, and traditions.

Each culture represents a harmonious balance of traditional conventions by means of which latent possibilities of human life can unfold themselves in a way which reveals to us new aspects of its unlimited richness and variety..

There are neighborhoods in France that are not French… Why would immigrants want to change France is they left their country to live in France? .. You have two kinds of people living in France: The French and the others…. To offer something to the world, France has to remain France.|

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

In many ways, Mitt Romney and I are very different. Different starts in life. Different paths to leadership. Different cultures.

Literally everything good about this culture comes from mixing.

I remember always going to the train station where I grew up, and on the wall was written, 'The real wealth of a nation is diversity of cultures.' Where I grew up, that's what I saw, and that's what I believe in as well - and I still believe it.

The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us

In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.

Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the coarse or centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved

The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life

Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.

In "solid modernity" difference was tolerated as a temporary irritant only, expected to disappear tomorrow, when "those aliens" will become like us. "Living with strangers" was therefore not something to last and did not call for developing appropriate arts and skills. Now, however, it looks like that diasporic context of our living will not go away - it will be there forever, so learning how to live with strangers day in, day out without abandoning my own strangeness is high on the agenda.

I think that the scienti?c way of looking at the world, and the humanistic way of looking at the world are complementary. There are important differences which should be preserved, and in trying to do away with those differences we would lose something the same way as if we tried to make all religions one religion or all races one race. There is a cultural diversity that's very valuable, and it's valuable to have different ways of looking at the world.

We are taking our culture and suturing it to America. Like gum on the bottom of a shoe, we are not going to disappear. Unlike other peoples who totally assimilated, we are more interested in co-assimilation.

I would like to say something just about the Mexican people. It is a population that has a wealth, such great wealth, a people that surprises.