Susan Sontag Quotes

540 quotes · Essayist, Critic, Activist

Page 25 of 45

Susan Sontag Quotes

All Philosophical Creative Angry Thoughtful Wise 540 quotes · page 25 of 45

Susan Sontag

Essayist, Critic, Activist

Philosophical

“We live in a world of copies and we're fascinated when we encounter the originals (in a museum, for instance).”

World Museums Encounters

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Susan Sontag

Essayist, Critic, Activist

Philosophical

“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”

Minorities Mass Culture Ethical Issues

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Nostalgic

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

Nostalgic

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Melancholic

“Etymologically, 'patient' means sufferer.”

Mean Patient

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Spiritual

“American energy. . . is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chronic cultural dislocations which must be, for the most part, ferociously sublimated. This energy has mainly been sublimated into crude materialism”

Energy Anxiety Floating

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Angry

“The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.”

World Government Borders

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Philosophical

“Sight is a promiscuous sense. The avid gaze always wants more.”

Want Sight

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Philosophical

“Images are more real than anyone could have supposed.”

Real Reality

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Spiritual

“Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.”

Way Past Reality

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Motivated

“As one passion begins to fail it is necessary to form another, for the whole art of going through life tolerably is to keep oneself eager about anything.”

Art Life Passion

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Spiritual

“Each generation has to reinvent spirituality.”

Generations Spirituality

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Philosophical

“Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures”

World Literature

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