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
It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Aphoristic thinking seeks to reach definitive conclusions, often fighting for the authority of the final word.
In this quote, Susan Sontag reflects on the nature of aphoristic thinking, describing it as a pursuit to arrive at conclusive statements. This tendency for brevity in expression often leads to the desire to assert one's perspective as the ultimate truth, highlighting the power and persuasion inherent in well-crafted phrases.
Themes
AphorismThinkingConclusionPhrase-MakingExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on communication, you might use this quote to illustrate the power of concise language.
More from Susan Sontag
All quotes βScience fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.
Susan SontagRead
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Susan SontagRead
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
Susan SontagRead
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.
Susan SontagRead
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.
Susan SontagRead
Similar quotes
Authenticity is more than speaking; Authenticity is also about doing. Every decision we make says something about who we are.
Simon SinekRead
We ought to see the face of God every morning before we see the face of man.
Dwight L. MoodyRead
When one bell is rung, by the sound of that one bell other bells will also vibrate. So it is with the dancing of the soul...it produces its reaction, and that again, will make other souls dance.
Hazrat Inayat KhanRead
Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of self-interest and a denial of the public good. The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't
John Ralston SaulRead
I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage. Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.
Edward R. MurrowRead
Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead