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Quote by Susan Sontag

“Al forms of consensus about ''great'' books and ''perennial'' problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of ''what is already known.'' Those great books don't only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.”

Quote by Susan Sontag

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Work

A Susan Sontag reader

This reader compiles a selection of Susan Sontag's influential writings, covering a range of topics including literature, art, photography, and cultural theory. Sontag's work is known for its intellectual rigor and innovative perspectives on contemporary issues. more

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

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“The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.”

World Way Two Problem This World Extinction Two Ways Duplication

Author:Susan Sontag

“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.”

“Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.”

Thinking Art Interesting Obligation Great Art Aesthetics

Author:Susan Sontag

“Bleak factory buildings and billboard-cluttered avenues look as beautiful, through the camera's eye, as churches and pastoral landscapes.”

Looks Eye Beautiful Church Beauty Building Cameras Landscape Factories Avenues Bleak Billboards

Book:On photography

Source: On photography

“Everyone who lives in an industrialized society is obliged gradually to give up the past, but in certain countries, such as the United States and Japan, the break with the past has been particularly traumatic.”

Giving Has Beens Country States Past Certain United Break United States Giving Up Capitalism Japan Obliged

Book:On photography

Source: On photography

“When comedy fails, seriousness begins to leak back in.”

Comedy Failing Seriousness Leaks

Author:Susan Sontag

“The felt unreliability of human experience brought about by the inhuman acceleration of historical change has led every sensitive modern mind to the recording of some kind of nausea, of intellectual vertigo.”

Mind Humans Kind Felt Change Modern Intellectual Historical Sensitive Human Experience Inhuman Nausea Acceleration Vertigo Unreliability Historical Change

Author:Susan Sontag

“In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.”

Art Culture Energy Criticism Intellect Revenge Sensual Interpretation Expenses Capability Dilemma

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.”

Art Use Theory Art Is Criticism Interpretation Works Of Art Categories Articles Schemes Arrangements Items Dubious

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

“The creative phase of an idea coincides with the period during which it insists, cantankerously, on its boundaries, on what makes it different; but an idea becomes false and impotent when it seeks reconciliation, at cut-rate prices, with other ideas.”

Ideas Different Creative Cutting Periods Rate Boundaries Phases Reconciliation

Author:Susan Sontag