Susan Sontag Illness As Metaphor Quotes & Sayings

The age-old, seemingly inexorable process whereby diseases acquire meanings (by coming to stand for the deepest fears) and inflict stigma is always worth challenging, and it does seem to have more limited credibility in the modern world, among people willing to be modern - the process is under surveillance now. With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from these meanings, these metaphors, seems particularly liberating, even consoling. But the metaphors cannot be distanced just by abstaining from them. They have to be exposed, criticized, belabored, used up. — Susan Sontag

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. — Susan Sontag

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society was corrupt or unjust. — Susan Sontag

I'm quite dyslexic in school. My dad let me figure out what I wanted to do on my own. My parents never really lecture me. — Georgia May Jagger

The furnace of affliction refines us from earthly drossiness, and softens us for the impression of God's own stamp. — Pierre Bayle

Moving to New York City and doing what I do, social anxiety is a really ridiculous kind of curse to have. But I met people along the way who deal with it - performers as well - and they are learning to deal with it daily and deal with it in different ways. — Sharon Van Etten

If you think Abraham Lincoln became famous for inventing the town car, it is time to spend a few hours on history. — Bo Bennett