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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“Indeed, the very first acknowledgment (as far as I am aware) of the attraction of mutilated bodies occurs in a founding description of mental conflict. It is a passage in The Republic, Book IV, where Plato’s Socrates describes how our reason may be overwhelmed by an unworthy desire, which drives the self to become angry with a part of its nature.”

FirstsMayBookSelfReasonBodyDesireConflictAngryAttractionDescriptionRepublicPassagesPlatoFoundingOverwhelmedUnworthyAcknowledgmentPlato S
Book:Regarding the Pain of Others
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“The need for truth is not constant; no more than is the need for repose. An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may better serve the needs of the spirit, which vary. The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.”

NeedsMayIdeasSpiritLyingGreaterBalanceTruth IsIntellectualOppositesConstantVaryThrustReposeDistortion
Book:A Susan Sontag reader
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“Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms.”

MayImportantSelfFeelingsAbleFormTurnsSuccessfulDebateTraditionalCensorshipEmergenciesDissentDisloyaltySelf Censorship
Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
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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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“The ratio of authentic literature to trash in pornography may be somewhat lower than the ratio of novels of genuine literary meritto the entire volume of sub-literary fiction produced for mass taste. But it is probably not lower than, for instance, that of another somewhat shady sub-genre with a few first-rate books to its credit, science fiction.”

FirstsMayBookLiteratureFictionNovelTasteMassScience FictionRateCreditGenuineInstanceGenreVolumePornographyTrashRatiosShady
Author:Susan Sontag
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“The quote is always fascinating because it changes out of context, becomes different and sometimes more mysterious. It has a directness and assertiveness it may not have had in the original. I think the quality of inaccessibility, the mystery, is important - that whatever matters can't be taken in on just one reading or one seeing. This is certainly a quality of the little of art that lasts.”

ThinkingMayLittlesArtImportantDifferentSometimesMatterLastsReadingQualityTakenSeeingMysteryOriginalsMysteriousJust OneFascinatingAssertivenessOf Context
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Enemies are somewhere else, as the fighting is almost always “over there,” with Islamic fundamentalism now replacing Russian and Chinese communism as the implacable, furtive menace. And “terrorist” is a more flexible word than “communist.” It can unify a larger number of quite different struggles and interests. What this may mean is that the war will be endless---since there will always be some terrorism.”

MayMeanDifferentWarFightingInterestNumbersEnemyStruggleTerrorismTerroristEndlessCommunismChineseIslamicCommunistFundamentalismFlexibleSomewhere ElseMenaceIslamic Fundamentalism
Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
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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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“Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.”

WorldWayWellsMayCoursesFoundModernObjectsBecomingConscienceTraditionEngagedIronicQuotationsFragmentsCollectingShatteredCollectorsPiousModern HistoryBecoming OneSalvageQuarry
Author:Susan Sontag
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