Home / Quotes / Quote by Susan Sontag

Quote by Susan Sontag

“Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives. Cancerphobia taught us the fear of a polluting environment; now we have the fear of polluting people that AIDS anxiety inevitably communicates. Fear of the Communion cup, fear of surgery: fear of contaminated blood, whether Christ's blood or your neighbor's.”

Quote by Susan Sontag

Author

Susan Sontag was an American writer, critic, and photographer. Known for her unique literary style and profound thinking, her work spans various fields including literature, art, and politics. Born on January 16, 1933, she passed away on December 28, 2004. more

You May Also Like

“Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos.”

Art Virtue Subjects Photography Touched Twilight Pathos Memento Mori

Book:On photography

Source: On photography

“We live in a culture in which intelligence is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying.”

Culture Views Authority Instruments Intelligence Critical Radical Innocence Denied Skeptical Relevance Repression

Author:Susan Sontag

“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.”

Humans White Race Existence Planets Balance Civilization Cancer Spread Ideology Upset Human History Ecological Autonomous White Race Existence Of Life Ecological Balance

Author:Susan Sontag

“When we're afraid we shoot. But when we're nostalgic we take pictures.”

Author:Susan Sontag

“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.”

Needs May Ideas Spirit Lying Greater Balance Truth Is Intellectual Opposites Constant Vary Thrust Repose Distortion

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy.”

Looks Shows Fantasy Perfection Painter Magazines Imperfection Nazi Forbidden Sculptors Physique Pinup

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art , Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community.”

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“I guess I think I'm writing for people who are smarter than I am, because then I'll be doing something that's worth their time. I'd be very afraid to write from a position where I consciously thought I was smarter than most of my readers.”

People Thinking Writing Position Reader Smarter

Author:Susan Sontag

“War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history's eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic's policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon.”

Years Long Has Beens War Happens Culture Realizing Community Results Imagine Generations One Thing Economic Policy Victory Eternal Victim Including Defeat Disaster Ruins Regions Alas Serbia

Author:Susan Sontag

“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.”

Wells Self Reality Seems Party Democracy Media Congress Officials Mature Soviet Rhetoric Unworthy Commentators Concealing Unanimity Sanctimonious

Book:At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches