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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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“Total experiences, of which there are many kinds, tend again and again to be apprehended only as revivals or translations of the religious imagination. To try to make a fresh way of talking at the most serious, ardent, and enthusiastic level, heading off the religious encapsulation, is one of the primary intellectual tasks of future thought.”

WayTryingKindImaginationReligiousLevelsTalkingSeriousIntellectualTasksPrimariesAgain And AgainTranslationsEnthusiasticRevivalHeadingsArdentWay Of Talking
Author:Susan Sontag
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“It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.”

PeopleThinkingWayWellsMeanLittlesIndividualSpeakGivenNaturalInterestingGroupsPrayingSolitudeSpeechIndividualityPainfulEloquenceCommunes
Book:As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964-1980
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“That tendency of social thought to generalize, to describe a leading tendency in a society in such a way that it seems that everything falls within its iron laws, is very common. Of course our own experience tells us that life is not as monochrome as these thinkers depict it. On the other hand they are very valuable because they alert us to transformations we are likely to take for granted.”

WayHandsSeemsLawLife IsFallCoursesSocialCommonTransformationValuableTendenciesGrantedIronThinkerMonochrome
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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“While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) — a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be.”

WayLightWould BeSubjectsObjectsPaintingMaterialsPhotographyStandardsCrossesPhotographWaveInterpretationNailsResemblanceResemblance IsLight Waves
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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“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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“I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things.”

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Author:Susan Sontag
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