Quote

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

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
Well
Brave
Believe
Consider
Good
Afraid
People
Courage
Virtue
Timid
Imagine
Neutral
Moral
Morally
Wells
Wicked

More quotes by Susan Sontag

Image
There are more and more taboos about calling something, anything, ugly.
Susan Sontag
Image
Many things in the world have not been named and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described.
Susan Sontag
Image
...to be a poet, requires a mythology of the self. The self described is the poet self, to which the daily self (and others) are often ruthlessly sacrificed. The poet self is the real self, the other one is the carrier and when the poet self dies, the person dies.
Susan Sontag
Image
Currently intellectuals in Western Europe and North America are extremely demoralized and shaken by the rise of a virulent conservative tendency (which some have even joined).
Susan Sontag
Image
The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.
Susan Sontag
Image
One man thinks before he acts. Another man thinks after he acts. Each is of the opinon that the other thinks too much.
Susan Sontag
Image
The most refined form of sexual attractiveness - as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure - consists in going against the grain of one's sex.
Susan Sontag
Image
Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.
Susan Sontag
Image
We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.
Susan Sontag
Image
Lying is an elementary means of self-defense.
Susan Sontag
Image
As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.
Susan Sontag
Image
People tend to become cynical about even the most appalling crisis if it seems to be dragging on, failing to come to term.
Susan Sontag
Image
What makes me feel strong? Being in love and work. I must work.
Susan Sontag
Image
Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.
Susan Sontag
Image
I love to read the way people love to watch television.
Susan Sontag
Image
I want to save my soul, that timid wind.
Susan Sontag
Image
Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares.
Susan Sontag
Image
In every society, the definitions of sanity and madness are arbitrary - are, in the largest sense, political.
Susan Sontag
Image
One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.
Susan Sontag
Image
What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death.
Susan Sontag