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

What this quote means

Embracing diversity is essential for vibrant life; eliminating differences leads to stagnation.

In this quote, Octavio Paz emphasizes the importance of cultural diversity and the uniqueness of different civilizations. He argues that suppressing these differences stifles progress and vitality, ultimately favoring a decline in life rather than fostering growth and evolution. The richness of life comes from its variety, and when we ignore or eliminate these distinctions, we risk diminishing the very essence of existence.

Themes

DiversityProgressCultureCivilizationLife

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of cultural inclusion.

More from Octavio Paz

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Erotic acts are instinctive; they fulfill a role in nature. The idea is familiar, but it is one that contains a paradox: there is nothing more natural than sexual desire; there is nothing less natural than the forms in which it is made manifest and satisfied.
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