Octavio Paz Quotes

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

If dictatorship is the concentration of power, freedom consists in its diffusion.

I have lived under totalitarian Communism, so I prize freedom as much as anyone and have long fought for freedom of conscience and speech.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism –-- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

The price of freedom is less than the cost of repression.

Totalitarianism liquidates its internal enemies or smashes opposition as soon as it arises; it uses methods that are simple and infallible because they are undemocratic. But democracy can defend itself from within only very feebly; its internal enemy has an easy time of it because he exploits the right to disagree that is inherent in democracy.

Which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

Freedom can be destroyed, not just by its retraction, but also by its abuse.

Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.

In any nation in which people's rights have been subordinated to the rights of the few, in any totalitarian nation, the first institution to be dismantled is the jury. I was, I am, afraid.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

Whenever all men are...hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

...any form of government that required the repression, imprisonment, and execution of those who disagreed with it was certainly not a government of the people.

If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine

Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.

My message is simple - freedom works a lot better than the authoritarian style of government.

Those who abhors democracy would rarely immigrate to an authoritarian state if they have to.