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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

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Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“Feeling of discontinuity as a person. My various selves—how do they all come together? And anxiety at moments of transition from one “role” to another. Will I make it fifteen minutes from now? Be able to step into, inhabit the person I’m supposed to be? This is felt as an infinitely hazardous leap, no matter how often it’s successfully executed.”

SelfAnxietyTransitionDifferent Selves
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
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“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 unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.”

WellsSelfRealitySeemsPartyDemocracyMediaCongressOfficialsMatureSovietRhetoricUnworthyCommentatorsConcealingUnanimitySanctimonious
Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
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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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“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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“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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