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Susan Sontag

115 quotes

“According to an old rule of psychic contagion: that absence of clarity or outright confusion in one, just one specific, local matter will end by infecting the whole of one's judgment.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Watkins said no with the practiced brusque delivery of a man who's always been rather sparing with his yes.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It depends on me, whether I'm happy within myself.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Diddy already knows what he does that's foolish and stupid, why can't he become wise? Act wisely. For, oh, Diddy has perceived his follies countless times. Is heartily ashamed of them, strenuously repudiates them. It's only that he doesn't understand. Not really. A hopeless, bumbling tourist in the somber labyrinth of his own consciousness.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And isn't it usually so, that lovers who share their daily lives with each other gradually find they need to put very little into words?”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Necessary for Diddy the Disciplined to proceed systematically, or he'll get lost. There's a system of priorities here, as anywhere else, that Diddy might be wise to observe.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'll take the American empire any day over the empire of what my pal Chris Hitchens calls "Islamic fascism." I'm not against fighting this enemy — it is an enemy and I'm not a pacifist. I think what happened on Sept. 11 was an appalling crime, and I'm astonished that I even have to say that, to reassure people that I feel that way. But I do feel that the Gulf War revisited is not the way to fight this enemy.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm sickened by the way that the delivery of so-called humanitarian aid is once again being used as a justification — or cover — for war.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional ones, such as territorial aggrandizement or the acquisition of scarce resources, are cast as clashes of civilizations — culture wars — with each side claiming the high ground, and characterizing the other as barbaric. The enemy is invariably a threat to "our way of life," an infidel, a desecrator, a polluter, a defiler of higher or better values. The current war against the very real threat posed by militant Islamic fundamentalism is a particularly clear example.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Americans have it right. Europeans are not in an evangelical — or a bellicose — mood. Indeed, sometimes I have to pinch myself to be sure I am not dreaming: that what many people in my own country now hold against Germany, which wreaked such horrors on the world for nearly a century — the new "German problem," as it were — is that Germans are repelled by war; that much of German public opinion is now virtually ... pacifist!”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From "old" Europe's point of view, America seems bent on squandering the admiration — and gratitude — felt by most Europeans. The immense sympathy for the United States in the aftermath of the attack on September 11, 2001 was genuine. (I can testify to its resounding ardor and sincerity in Germany; I was in Berlin at the time.) But what has followed is an increasing estrangement on both sides. The citizens of the richest and most powerful nation in history have to know that America is loved, and envied ... and resented.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Americans are constantly extolling "traditions"; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician's discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as "identities" that can be accepted as part of larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The United States is a generically religious society. That is, in the United States it's not important which religion you adhere to, as long as you have one.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Old" and "new" are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world. We cannot do without the old, because in what is old is invested all our past, our wisdom, our memories, our sadness, our sense of realism. We cannot do without faith in the new, because in what is new is invested all our energy, our capacity for optimism, our blind biological yearning, our ability to forget — the healing ability that makes reconciliation possible.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? It seems to me that one should always be seeking to talk oneself out of these stark oppositions.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The writer in me distrusts the good citizen, the "intellectual ambassador," the human rights activist — those roles which are mentioned in the citation for this prize, much as I am committed to them. The writer is more skeptical, more self-doubting, than the person who tries to do (and to support) the right thing.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another. Writers can do something to combat these clichés of our separateness, our difference — for writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences — experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted — made cynical, superficial — by this understanding.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is a man’s game—the killing machine has a gender, and it is male.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They [photographs of war victims] create the illusion of consensus.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No “we” should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s pain.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the militant, identity is everything.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In contrast, images offering evidence that contradicts cherished pieties are invariably dismissed as having been staged for the camera.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is called in news parlance “the world”…is (unlike the world) a very small place, both geographically and thematically, and what is thought worth knowing about it is expected to be transmitted tersely and emphatically.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ever since [the Vietnam War], battles and massacres filmed as they unfold have been a routine ingredient of the ceaseless flow of domestic, small-screen entertainment.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is the largest crime.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most people will not question the rationalizations offered by their government for starting or continuing a war.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Often their [media] decisions are cast as judgments about “good taste”—always a repressive standard when invoked by institutions.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody who really thinks about history can take politics altogether seriously.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock. But they are not much help if the task is to understand.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But maybe they were barbarians. Maybe this is what most barbarians look like. (They look like everybody else).”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question is, Whom do we wish to blame? More precisely, Whom do we believe we have the right to blame?”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever people feel safe...they will be indifferent.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And it is not necessarily better to be moved. Sentimentality, notoriously, is entirely compatible with a taste for brutality and worse.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But if we consider what emotions would be desirable [in response to the suffering of others], it seems too simple to elect sympathy.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps too much value is assigned to memory, not enough to thinking.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Too much remembering embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An erotic life is, for more and more people, that which can be captured on digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture one is inflicting on helpless, trussed, naked victims is only part of the story. There is the primal satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn't take a picture of them.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies and family. What is revealed by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality. Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Bush administration has committed the country to a new, pseudo-religious doctrine of war, endless war — for "the war on terror" is nothing less than that.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source