Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
Susan SontagRead
Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Lying serves as an easy way for individuals to protect themselves from truth or vulnerability.
This quote by Susan Sontag suggests that people often resort to lying as a basic instinct to shield themselves from harm or to avoid uncomfortable truths. Instead of facing difficult situations or acknowledging their real feelings, individuals might find solace in deception as a defense mechanism, implementing it as a means of self-preservation in interpersonal interactions.
Themes
LyingSelf-DefenseTruthDeceptionPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion about honesty in relationships, this quote could illustrate the temptation to avoid the truth.
More from Susan Sontag
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Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
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Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
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In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.
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It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
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Similar quotes
A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.
Thomas PaineRead
To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.
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...our eyes locked in one of those looks that sometimes happen between strangers, when both wordlessly agree that reality contains sinkholes whose depths neither can ever hope to fathom.
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Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
Mustafa Kemal AtaturkRead
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
Norman CousinsRead
Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
Rene DescartesRead