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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.”

WayFeelsHumansHandsMoralCapableEvidenceCrueltyPsychologicalAdulthoodDepravityDisillusioned
Book:Regarding the Pain of Others
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“The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.”

HumansWhiteRaceExistencePlanetsBalanceCivilizationCancerSpreadIdeologyUpsetHuman HistoryEcologicalAutonomousWhite RaceExistence Of LifeEcological Balance
Author:Susan Sontag
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“If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society - it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there.”

IfsHumansPersonsArtLastsArtistConsciousnessCenturyDangerousPositionActivityTasksSecularFrontiersUnprecedentedStatureHuman ActivityAutonomousSecular Society
Author:Susan Sontag
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“One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counterstatements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue: responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.”

HumansArtMightCultureLiteratureAliveArt IsTasksDialogueEvolveConstructsPietyResponsiveness
Book:Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung
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“Photography - the supreme form of travel, of tourism - is the principal modern means for enlarging the world. As a branch of art, photography's enterprise of world enlargement tends to specialize in the subjects felt to be challenging, transgressive. A photograph may be telling us: this too exists. And that. And that. (And it is all 'human.') But what are we to do with this knowledge - if indeed it is knowledge, about, say, the self, about abnormality, about ostracized or clandestine worlds?”

IfsWorldHumansMayMeanArtSelfFormFeltChallengesModernSubjectsPhotographyPhotographSupremeBranchesEnterprisePrincipalTourismEnlargementAbnormalityClandestineArt Photography
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Cameras began duplicating the world at that moment when the human landscape started to undergo a vertiginous rate of change: while an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time, a device is available to record what is disappearing.”

WorldHumansMomentsFormSocialNumbersRecordsPhotographyCamerasRateAvailableDisappearDestroyedLandscapeDevicesThat MomentSocial LifeRate Of Change
Book:On photography
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“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding.”

ThinkingWorldTryingHumansMeanMadeUnderstandingHuman BeingsPayAttentionCapablePay AttentionCynicalSuperficialWickedness
Book:Susan Sontag: Ansprachen aus Anlass der Verleihung
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“Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.”

WorldHumansGovernmentChurchWhiteRaceParticularCivilizationRacismCancerAlsGenocideJudaismHuman HistoryNewtonEmancipationAlgebraParliamentaryBaroquePascalWhite RaceWhite GenocideParliamentary Government
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness - pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden arbitrary violence upon another person to the voluptuous yearning for the extinction of one's consciousness, for death itself. Even on the level of simple physical sensation and mood, making love surely resembles having an epileptic fit at least as much as, if not more than, it does eating a meal or conversing with someone.”

IfsLoveHumansMayPersonsDoeDesireForceSimpleLevelsConsciousnessViolenceDangerousFitEatingRemainsSexualityMoodCommitImpulseRangeMealsPushingSensationsYearningMaking LoveArbitraryExtinctionTabooIntervalsHuman ConsciousnessDemonicTamedVoluptuousEpileptics
Author:Susan Sontag
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“The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.”

LifeHumansSelfAmericaSpiritualLife IsGrowthSpaceQualityCarPossibilityTvsEnvironmentalAthleteBoxesArchitectureSensesInsultGrayPollutionAmerican Life
Author:Susan Sontag
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