"The standard that a society should actually embody……" — Susan Sontag

"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."

— Susan Sontag

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341 Quotes by Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag has 341 quotes on this site. A few more worth reading:

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More Act Quotes

This quote is filed under Act Quotes, one of 8,447 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. — Hannah Arendt
It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has… — Hannah Arendt
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle
Quality is not an act, it is a habit. — Aristotle
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence,… — Aristotle
Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last. — Aristotle
Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories. — Karen Armstrong
Music is the social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is. — Malcolm Arnold
Criticize the act, not the person. — Mary Kay Ash
We like to engage in a normal publishing effort, which is to act in a responsible manner and make sure… — Julian Assange
Gardening is not a rational act. — Margaret Atwood
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of… — Wystan Hugh Auden

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