Quote

As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.

Susan Sontag

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Susan Sontag
Age: 71 †
Born: 1933
Born: January 16
Died: 2004
Died: December 28
Author
Essayist
Feminist
Film Critic
Film Director
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
New York City
New York
Susan Rosenblatt
Incorrigible
Weakness
Numb
Answer
Steel
Objects
Contemplation
Answers
Images
Existence
Acknowledge
Different
Several
Needs
Atrocious
Make
Oneself

More quotes by Susan Sontag

Image
I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.
Susan Sontag
Image
... one of art photography's most vigorous enterprises--[is] concentrating on victims, on the unfortunate--but without the compassionate purpose that such a project is expected to serve.
Susan Sontag
Image
Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.
Susan Sontag
Image
The white race is the cancer of human history it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.
Susan Sontag
Image
Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel.
Susan Sontag
Image
Cancer is a demonic pregnancy.
Susan Sontag
Image
To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.
Susan Sontag
Image
Thinking, writing are ultimately questions of stamina.
Susan Sontag
Image
I make an idol of my moral consciousness. My pursuit of the good is corrupted by the sin of idolatry.
Susan Sontag
Image
All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.
Susan Sontag
Image
Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism
Susan Sontag
Image
Where once it was the physician who waged bellum contra morbum, the war against disease, now it's the whole society.
Susan Sontag
Image
How boring just to be a body.
Susan Sontag
Image
One of the author's most ancient roles is to call the community to account for its hypocrisies and bad faith.
Susan Sontag
Image
Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.
Susan Sontag
Image
It's a pleasure to share one's memories. Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe though we didn't know it at the time. We know it now. Because it's in the past because we have survived.
Susan Sontag
Image
Desire has no history.
Susan Sontag
Image
There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.
Susan Sontag
Image
A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.
Susan Sontag
Image
A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.
Susan Sontag