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Susan Sontag Quotes

1933–2004 United States

Susan Sontag (16 January 1933 – 28 December 2004) was an American essayist, literary critic, cultural theorist, and political activist.

United States
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Also known as: Sontag, Susan

Random Susan Sontag quote

102 quotes

Don't be too hard on the envious. Be glad you have, or had in the past, something enviable.

Death Kit (1967)

From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction.

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

The Benefactor (1963)

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated.

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

Interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

Watkins said no with the practiced brusque delivery of a man who's always been rather sparing with his yes.

Death Kit (1967)

Often their [media] decisions are cast as judgments about “good taste”—always a repressive standard when invoked by institutions.

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

"Old" and "new" are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world.

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)

The work of Kafka … has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three armies of interpreters.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

Never before was the relation of masters and slaves so consciously aestheticized.

Fascinating Fascism (1974)

To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world—in order to set up a shadow world of "meanings."

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

The problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs.

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

No “we” should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s pain.

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

Nobody who really thinks about history can take politics altogether seriously.

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

War is a man’s game—the killing machine has a gender, and it is male.

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Susan Sontag (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.