Maxioms by Susan Sontag
The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. . . . The least energizing emotion read more
The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. . . . The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration . . . because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.
A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly read more
A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.
The standard that a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian one, in the sense that read more
The standard that a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian one, in the sense that moral principles contradict the way things really are --- and always will be. How things really are --- and always will be --- is neither all-evil nor all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally. Principles invite us to clean up our act; to become intolerant of moral laxity and compromise and cowardice and the turning away from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us that what we are doing is not right, and so counsels us that we'd be better off just not thinking about it.
Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence, but read more
Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence, but because it is felt to be obscene -- in the original meaning of that word: ill-omened, abominable, repugnant to the senses.
