Susan Sontag Quotes

There are thoughts we must not think.

I am a comedian. My brain is critical - it's overthinking - but you can find ways to turn it down and realize that's not who you really are.

We find that the more you talk about it, the more you head off any spontaneous inspiration that might happen.

I'm fascinated that people drawn to cults want to know what to do. And people want to know what to think. And people want to know how to feel. Not just what to feel but how to feel.

People think I watch TV too much, but they are wrong. There is a huge difference between merely "watching" TV and learning to respond aggressively to it. The difference, for most people, is the difference between the living and dying of their own brains.

I find it depressing that people think you have to be on drugs to watch [my stuff], that’s a cop out, use your brain, use your imagination.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

They say Im demonic in humor in the sense that I think people need somebody to wake up their mental processes.

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

I wish people would quit telling me to think. I think. Thinking's easy. It's not thinking that's hard.

People calculate too much and think too little.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has.

I think intellectualization is what's killing most people.

...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.

I teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.

We don't read other people's opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think.

Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don't think so. Don't condemn them. Any fool can do that. Try to understand them. Only wise, tolerant, exceptional people even try to do that.

When you think about people, you give them power.

The left are afraid of independent thinkers. They are afraid of people who are able to reason and think on their own.

The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.

The sad fact is that if you love education, revere the life of the mind, care about the pursuit of truth, think young people need to receive wisdom from their elders, and value moral clarity, the university is the last place you would want to send your 18-year-old.

Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think.

I think that could be a very compromising situation where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.

The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry. And I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.