“Since movement is a metaphor for change, the best thing will be to say: nonchange is (always) change. It would appear that I have finally arrived at the desired disequilibrium.”

—  Octavio Paz

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 4
Context: Since movement is a metaphor for change, the best thing will be to say: nonchange is (always) change. It would appear that I have finally arrived at the desired disequilibrium. Nonetheless, change is not the primordial, original word that I am searching for: it is a form of becoming. When becoming is substituted for change, the relation between the two terms is altered, so that I am obliged to replace nonchange by permanence, which is a metaphor for fixity, as becoming is for coming-to-be, which in turn is a metaphor for time in all its ceaseless transformations…. There is no beginning, no original word: each one is a metaphor for another word which is a metaphor for yet another, and so on. All of them are translations of translations. A transparency in which the obverse is the reverse: fixity is always momentary.
I begin all over again: if it does not make sense to say that fixity is always momentary, the same may not be true if I say that it never is.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Since movement is a metaphor for change, the best thing will be to say: nonchange is (always) change. It would appear t…" by Octavio Paz?
Octavio Paz photo
Octavio Paz 71
Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Lite… 1914–1998

Related quotes

Andy Warhol photo

“They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 7: Time
Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Joseph Campbell photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo
Jean Tinguely photo
Jordan Sonnenblick photo

“And if there was one thing I'd finally figured out, it was that your mind is something you always CAN change.”

Jordan Sonnenblick (1969) American writer

Source: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

Prem Rawat photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“Change isn't always for the best.”

Variant: It's not such a bad thing. Change isn't always for the best.
Source: The Best of Me

Karl Pilkington photo

“People say having kids is life changing, well that doesn't necessarily mean a good thing, does it? I could take one of my legs off. That would change my life.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Moaning of Life, Karl on Kids

Neil Gaiman photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“But now let me return to my theme of the many changes that have taken place since I was last here. There is a jocular saying: ‘To improve is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often.’ I had to use that once or twice in my long career.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to a joint session of Congress, Washington, D.C., (17 January 1952) "We Must Not Lose Hope", in The Great Republic : A History of America (2000), Churchill, Random House, p. 399 ISBN 0375754407
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Related topics