The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern. Octavio Paz More Quotes by Octavio Paz More Quotes From Octavio Paz A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims. Octavio Paz future society attitude memories The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art. Octavio Paz change today history art The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention. Octavio Paz lose beginning losing attitude Technology is neutral and sterile. Now, technology is the nature of modern man; it is our environment and our horizon. Of course, every work of man is a negation of nature, but at the same time, it is a bridge between nature and us. Technology changes nature in a more radical and decisive manner: it throws it out. Octavio Paz man technology nature work Surrealism is not a poetry but a poetics, and even more, and more decisively, a world vision. Octavio Paz more vision poetry world A work survives its readers; after a hundred or two hundred years, it is read by new readers who impose on it new modes of reading and interpretation. The work survives because of these interpretations, which are, in fact, resurrections: without them, there would be no work. Octavio Paz without new reading work
