The truth is always something that is told, not something…

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.

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The Benefactor (1963), Ch. 1, p. 1, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42012-9

Other Susan Sontag Quotes

Modernist tasks and liberties have stirred up a canny diffidence among painters of the largest accomplishment when pressed to talk about their art. It appears unseemly, or naive, to have much to say about the pictures or to attach to them any explicit “program.” No more theories expounding an ideal way of painting. And, as statements wither and with them counter-statements, hardly anything in the way of provocation either. Decorum suggests that artists sound somewhat trapped when being drawn out, and venturing a few cagey glimpses of intention. - View Quote Details on Modernist tasks and liberties have stirred up a canny diffidence…
Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don’t become inured to what they are shown — if that’s the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. - View Quote Details on Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated…
“Old” and “new” are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world. We cannot do without the old, because in what is old is invested all our past, our wisdom, our memories, our sadness, our sense of realism. We cannot do without faith in the new, because in what is new is invested all our energy, our capacity for optimism, our blind biological yearning, our ability to forget — the healing ability that makes reconciliation possible. - View Quote Details on “Old” and “new” are the perennial poles of all feeling…
Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility. And the means for practicing art have been radically extended…. Painters no longer feel themselves confined to canvas and paint, but employ hair, photographs, wax, sand, bicycle tires, their own toothbrushes and socks. Musicians have reached beyond the sounds of the traditional instruments to use tampered instruments and (usually on tape) synthetic sounds and industrial noises. - View Quote Details on Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument…
The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture one is inflicting on helpless, trussed, naked victims is only part of the story. There is the primal satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn’t take a picture of them. - View Quote Details on The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture one…
The sublimity of color in Hodgkin’s pictures can be thought of as, first of all, expressive of gratitude — for the world that resists and survives the ego and its discontents. - View Quote Details on The sublimity of color in Hodgkin’s pictures can be thought…
Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens — and real diseases are useful material. - View Quote Details on Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear,…
Stop the War and Stop the Genocide, read the banners being waved in the demonstrations in Rome and here in Bari. For Peace. Against War. Who is not? But how can you stop those bent on genocide without making war? - View Quote Details on Stop the War and Stop the Genocide, read the banners…
From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art. We can only quarrel with one or another means of defense. Indeed, we have an obligation to overthrow any means of defending and justifying art which becomes particularly obtuse or onerous or insensitive to contemporary needs and practices.
This is the case, today, with the very idea of content itself. Whatever it may have been in the past, the idea of content is today mainly a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism. - View Quote Details on From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck…
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own. - View Quote Details on The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality,…