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" "At the dawn of human society there were no individuals, only the tribe, the closed society. The sovereign individual freed from this collective body that jealously closed in on itself in order to defend itself from wild animals, lightning bolts, evil spirits, and innumerable other fears of the primitive world, is a late creation of humanity. It takes shape with the appearance of the critical spirit—with the discovery that the world and life are problems that can and must be solved—that is, with the development of rationalism and the right to exercise this rationalism independent of religious and political authorities.
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation.
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The only way to progress is by stumbling, falling, and getting up, time and again. Error will always be there because the best decisions are always, to some extent, bound up in error. In the great challenge of separating truth from lies—a goal, perhaps the most human of all goals, that is perfectly possible to achieve—it is essential to bear in mind that in this task there can never be definitive achievements that cannot be challenged later, and no knowledge that cannot be revised. In the great forest of misperceptions and deceptions, mistakes and mirages, through which we roam, the only way that truth can clear a path is by rational and systematic criticism of what is—or passes for—knowledge. Without this privileged expression of freedom, the right to criticize, we are condemned to oppression, brutality, and also obscurantism.
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