Quote

Indeed, the very first acknowledgment (as far as I am aware) of the attraction of mutilated bodies occurs in a founding description of mental conflict. It is a passage in The Republic, Book IV, where Plato’s Socrates describes how our reason may be overwhelmed by an unworthy desire, which drives the self to become angry with a part of its nature.

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
Firsts
Conflict
Description
Unworthy
Book
Desire
Republic
Passage
Self
Nature
Attraction
Occurs
First
Become
Bodies
Plato
Part
Mental
Overwhelmed
Mutilated
Body
Indeed
Founding
Acknowledgment
May
Aware
Drives
Socrates
Reason
Angry
Passages
Describes

More quotes by Susan Sontag

Image
It's beginnings that are hard. I always begin with a great sense of dread and trepidation. Nietzsche says that the decision to start writing is like leaping into a cold lake.
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
Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures
Susan Sontag
Image
To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.
Susan Sontag
Image
Everything should be understood, and anything can be transformed - that is the modern view.
Susan Sontag
Image
the process of building a self and its works is always too slow. One is always in arrears to oneself.
Susan Sontag
Image
It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.
Susan Sontag
Image
Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power, are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease.
Susan Sontag
Image
Art is seduction, not rape.
Susan Sontag
Image
What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.
Susan Sontag
Image
The fear of AIDS imposes on an act whose ideal is an experience of pure presentness (and a creation of the future) a relation to the past to be ignored at one's peril. Sex no longer withdraws its partners, if only for a moment, from the social. It cannot be considered just a coupling it is a chain, a chain of transmission, from the past.
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
She felt herself needing more and more sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she thought of when she might lie down again - and when she would sleep. She started going to the movies.
Susan Sontag
Image
Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.
Susan Sontag
Image
The danger, when not too dangerous, fascinate.
Susan Sontag
Image
His view of time, and of change, has become that of most elderly people: he hates change, since for him - for his body - any change is for the worse. And if there is to be change, then he wants it to happen quickly, so it does not use up too much of the time remaining to him.
Susan Sontag
Image
The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to the serious. One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.
Susan Sontag
Image
Despite the illusion of giving understanding, what seeing through photographs really invites is an acquisitive relation to the world that nourishes aesthetic awareness and promotes emotional detachment.
Susan Sontag
Image
Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.
Susan Sontag
Image
It's hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid.
Susan Sontag