Susan Sontag Quotes

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

There's no right or wrong, success or failure.

I have no doubt that if you were to ask a cannibal, he would plead his religion for the heinous acts he does.

One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else.

Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.

So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really?

What you think in your own mind to be good, or what people of the world think is good, is not necessarily good.

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

I don't think villains think they are villains.

I can't understand why culture cops try and impose their brand of morality on others.

The world is made up of good and evil, and everybody has their own take, and everybody thinks they are on the good side, and a very few, select group of us will admit that we come from the dark side.

In Japan, violence isn't as controversial as it is in the West.

The label of tasteful or tasteless is so often used to silence people and to maintain the status quo. It's used to shame people for not following the commonly accepted routine, for not aligning themselves with the status quo.

There is no possible line of conduct which has at some time and place been condemned, and which has not at some other time and place been enjoined as a duty.

It was fashionable, youre supposed to be a married lady, so I did.

We were born in this society, we grew up in this society. And we learn to be like everyone else, playing nonsense all the time.

But what really is immorality? And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?

All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.

They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian.

A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.

The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.

Never presume yours is a better morality.

Evil to some is always good to others