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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“The fear of AIDS imposes on an act whose ideal is an experience of pure presentness (and a creation of the future) a relation to the past to be ignored at one's peril. Sex no longer withdraws its partners, if only for a moment, from the social. It cannot be considered just a coupling; it is a chain, a chain of transmission, from the past.”

IfsMomentsPastSocialSexCreationPureIdealsRelationAidsPartnersChainsIgnoredPerilTransmissionCoupling
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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“Between two fantasy alternatives, that Holbein the Younger had lived long enough to have painted Shakespeare or that a prototype of the camera had been invented early enough to have photographed him, most Bardolators would choose the photograph. This is not just because it would presumably show what Shakespeare really looked like, for even if the photograph were faded, barely legible, a brownish shadow, we would probably still prefer it to another glorious Holbein. Having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a nail from the True Cross.”

IfsLongStillsTwoEnoughShowsWould BeFantasyShadowCrossesCamerasPhotographAlternativesGloriousNailsFadedPrototype
Book:On photography
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“I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.”

IfsFeelsMeanSelfPlayTruthLyingPartyRolesActivityLowsAuthentic SelfFragmentedRole Playing
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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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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“People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration.”

PeopleIfsWayStatesFeelingsHappensMoralEmotionalRageFrustrationApathyQuantityRight WayPassivityDumpedAnesthesia
Book:Regarding the Pain of Others
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“Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even...Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity.”

IfsAgeSchoolChoicesVirtueJudgingDependsMoralityBehaviorTasksEmptyAssumingOneselfConventionsSpontaneityAssessmentFormalityDecorumInsincere
Book:Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
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“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.”

IfsNeedsFeelsHas BeensFeelingsActionCan DoEmotionCompassionBoredCynicalUnstableApathetic
Book:Regarding the Pain of Others
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“The solution to a problem - a story that you are unable to finish - is the problem. It isn't as if the problem is one thing and the solution something else. The problem, properly understood = the solution. Instead of trying to hide or efface what limits the story, capitalize on that very limitation. State it, rail against it.”

IfsWritingTryingStatesStoriesProblemOne ThingLimitsSolutionsUnderstoodLimitationRailSolution To A Problem
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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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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“Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: “There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsLooksRealityFormFantasyObjectsUltimatePhotographSurfaceEncountersMultipleSpeculationInvitationsFascinationDeductionsMultiple Meanings
Book:On photography
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