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
The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the process of defining American identity through the rejection of foreign elements.
Octavio Paz suggests that the American War of Independence was not only a physical conflict but also a cultural and existential battle to define what it means to be American. By expelling elements deemed unassimilable, this period marked a transformative moment where the nation began to forge its own identity, focused on self-reinvention and cultural authenticity, thereby determining what is considered truly American.
Themes
IdentityIndependenceAmericaCultureSelf-Reinvention
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about cultural pride, one might reference this quote to highlight the importance of a unified national identity.
More from Octavio Paz
All quotes βBy suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
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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.
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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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