Susan Sontag Quotes — Page 23

Essayist, Critic, Activist

Nostalgic

“Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.”

Past Passion Photographer

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Susan Sontag

Essayist, Critic, Activist

Philosophical

“The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.”

Life Spiritual Athlete

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Thoughtful

“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.”

Ideas Lying Opposites

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Creative

“The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations.”

Art Ideas Analysis

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Philosophical

“If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society - it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there.”

Art Tasks Secular Society

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Spiritual

“I can't say I know how to change the society, but I share the feeling that this society is full of technology which depersonalizes people, which seems to drain a sense of reality from our lives. It's full of a lot of other things too.”

People Reality Technology

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Curious

“Most writers I know have switched to word processors. I haven't but I'm very curious about why people like it so much. I think it has something to do with the fact that at last writing, which has been such an old-fashioned, artisanal activity, even on a typewriter, has now entered the central domain of modern experience which is that of making copies, being involved in the world of duplicates and machine-mediated activities.”

Thinking Writing Typewriters

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Courageous

“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.”

People Believe Brave

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Creative

“Quotation is a method of appropriation which is invincible, I think. It's not a procedure which displeases me, contrary to recycling.”

Thinking Recycling Procedures

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Philosophical

“There are some elements in life - above all, sexual pleasure - about which it isn't necessary to have a position.”

Pleasure Elements Position

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Philosophical

“Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.”

Art Social Force

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Creative

“Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing.”

Way Firsts Photography

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