Augusto Roa Bastos Quotes

#1. It is not by believing but by doubting that one can attain to the truth, which is ever changing form and condition.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#2. In all nations an exceptional man exists that compensates the deficiencies of the remainder. In those moments, when humanity is found collectively in a state of decadence, there always remain those exceptional beings as point of reference.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#3. The things that have come into being change continually. The man with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#4. Letters couldn't care less whether what is written with them is true or false.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#5. What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what's behind them.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#6. Anyone who attempts to relate his life loses himself in the immediate. One can only speak of another.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#7. Forms disappear, words remain, to signify the impossible.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#8. The great principle of Justice: prevent crime rather than punish it. All that is needed to execute a guilty man is a firing squad or a hangman. To prevent there being guilty men requires great astuteness.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#9. Man is an idiot. He doesn't know how to do anything without copying, without imitating, without plagiarizing, without aping. It might even have been that man invented generation by coitus after seeing the grasshopper copulate.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#10. Facts can't be recounted; much less twice over, and far less still by different persons. I've already drummed that thoroughly into your head.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#11. The dictionary is an ossuary of empty words.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#12. To write does not mean to convert the real into words but to make the power of the word real.

Augusto Roa Bastos

#13. There is always time to take more time.

Augusto Roa Bastos