Susan Sontag Zitate

seite 3

„Faschismus (und offene Militärherrschaft) ist nicht nur das wahrscheinliche Schicksal aller kommunistischen Gesellschaften - insbesondere, wenn ihre Bevölkerung zum Aufstand veranlasst wird -, sondern der Kommunismus ist an sich eine Variante, die erfolgreichste Variante des Faschismus. Faschismus mit menschlichem Antlitz.“

„Die Wahrheit ist, dass Mozart, Pascal, Boolesche Algebra, Shakespeare, parlamentarische Regierungsform, Barockkirchen, Newton, die Emanzipation der Frauen, Kant, Marx und die Ballette Balanchines nicht wiedergutmachen, was diese besondere Zivilisation über die Welt gebracht hat. Die weiße Rasse ist der Krebs der Menschheitsgeschichte.“

„Ich nenne mich gerne die weltgrößte Germanistin, die kein Deutsch spricht“

„Du musst tot sein. Wenn Du den Preis gekriegt hast, danach ist Schluss“

„Ich war nicht überall, aber es steht auf meiner Liste.“

„Es ist Passivität, die das Gefühl abstumpft.“

„Depression ist Melancholie minus ihre Reize.“

„Die Entdeckung des guten Geschmacks des schlechten Geschmacks kann sehr befreiend sein. Der Mensch, der auf hohen und ernsten Genüssen besteht, beraubt sich selbst des Vergnügens; er schränkt ständig ein, was er genießen kann. Durch die ständige Ausübung seines guten Geschmacks wird er sich schließlich sozusagen selbst vom Markt verdrängen.“

„Mach Sachen. Sei geballt, neugierig. Warte nicht auf den Schubs der Inspiration oder den Kuss der Gesellschaft auf deine Stirn. Pass auf. Es geht nur um Aufmerksamkeit. Aufmerksamkeit ist Vitalität. Es verbindet dich mit anderen. Es macht dich eifrig. Bleib eifrig.“

“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.”

“Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art”

“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”

“The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.”

“I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing - not just a waiting.”

“Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality… One can't possess reality, one can possess images--one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.”

“The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”

“I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.”

“I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.”

“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.”

“Life is a movie; death is a photograph.”

“I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.”

“Mad people = People who stand alone and burn.
I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.”

“Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.”

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”

“I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path.”

“Instead of expecting all and being lowered into despair each time I get less, I expect nothing now and, occasionally, I get a little, and am more than a little happy.”

“Rules of taste enforce structures of power.”

“Wherever people feel safe (…) they will be indifferent.”

“Art is seduction, not rape.”

“Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book. No book is worth reading that isn't worth re-reading.”

“One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.”

“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”

“[O]ne person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing.”

“Passion paralyzes good taste.”

“Love is friendship on fire -- anonymous”

“Etymologically, 'patient' means sufferer.”

“Being in Love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.”

“My ignorance is not charming.”