Susan Sontag Quotes

Nine times out of 10, criticism is a defense mechanism. We criticize in others what we don't like in ourselves.

The person you call an enemy is an exaggerated aspect of your own shadow self.

I despise in others my own characteristics.

Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.

Someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, [is] an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow.

The world is a mirror for us – whatever you say about others is really how you feel about yourself.

I've been criticized for not having perspective in the past and I thought that of myself many times but not there.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.

I'm very self-critical.

I can feel pretty critical of people, and I understand that sort of feeling of when you're going through something that's painful, taking it out on the world and projecting onto other people, finding faults with other people because it's harder to find faults in yourself.

I see myself capable of arrogance and brutality... That's a fierce thing, to discover within yourself that which you despise the most in others.

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.

No shortcomings of other people cause us to be more intolerant than those which are caricatures of our own.

You can make yourself feel better about yourself if you project your shadow side, if you project your own potential for evil onto someone else. By annihilating them and, therefore, your shadow, you bring yourself into some state of purity or reformation.

People only hate what they see in themselves.

It's hard for me to characterise myself. I think I'm balanced. Some people might say I'm cold-hearted.

Every person is observant of the flaws of others and blind to his own flaws.

Getting up and criticizing the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time. Especially as you know in your heart that you would be doing more or less the same thing if you were in his place.

I'm much more interested in looking at our own failings than going to some faraway place and looking at their failings, thus making us feel good about ourselves.

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.

The more defensive and angry I get, the more I later discover those feelings are usually just projections of feelings I am having towards myself.

I think, as a country, that we can be quite harsh on ourselves.

Every quality I despise in George Bush is a quality I despise in myself. He is my worst self realized.