A Quote by Susan Sontag

The only interesting ideas are heresies

Susan Sontag

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Ideas Interesting Interesting Ideas Only

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Susan Sontag
American - Author
January 16, 1933 - December 28, 2004

Al forms of consensus about ''great'' books and ''perennial'' problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of ''what is already known.'' Those great books don't only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.

Susan Sontag

Heresy is the lifeblood of religions. It is faith that begets heresies. There are no heresies in a dead religion.

Andre Suares

More than most, I believe I'm highly attuned to how heresies eventually become mainstream belief systems and how the vast majority of people who consider themselves 'edgy' are those who only embraced radical ideas LONG after it became safe for them to do so.

Jim Goad

No, but I've never been one for wise ideas," he says. "I believe in irrational, fleeting decisions that keep life interesting. And life needs to be interesting because we've got only one of them to live.

Jessica Sorensen

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.

Charles Bukowski

Let us pray for the Catholic Church; for the Churches throughout the whole world; that is, for their truth, unity, and stability; that in all charity may flourish, and truth may live. For our own Church, that what is lacking in it may be supplied; what is unsound, corrected; that all Heresies, Schisms, Scandals, as well public as private, may be removed. Correct the wandering, convert the unbelieving, increase the faith of the Church, destroy Heresies, discover the crafty enemies, crush the violent.

Lancelot Andrewes

Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.

Salman Rushdie

Profound insights arise only in debate, with a possibility of counterargument, only when there is a possibility of expressing not only correct ideas but also dubious ideas.

Andrei Sakharov

In science one must search for ideas. If there are no ideas, there is no science. A knowledge of facts is only valuable in so far as facts conceal ideas: facts without ideas are just the sweepings of the brain and the memory.

Vissarion Belinsky

I think that to be a good artist, you have to have ideas as well as manual skills. It's a blend of the two, hopefully, and there are a lot of people there that can do things well, but they might not be devoid of good ideas or maybe they're not especially interesting ideas, or maybe there's a good idea that a person is unable to execute in the manner that does justice to the idea.

Michael C. McMillen

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Alfred Whitney Griswold

Too much polishing and you spoil things. There's a limit to the expressibility of ideas. You have a new thought, an interesting one. Then, as you try to perfect it, it ceases to be new and interesting, and loses the freshness with which it first occurred to you. You're spoiling it.

Leo Tolstoy

There was an event called the World Transformed, which was set up by Momentum, and people from across the political spectrum have had to tip their hat to it. It's vibrant, with interesting discussions and ideas. That's why it's such an interesting political moment.

Ed Miliband

The great German scholar Helmut Thielicke once said that a person who speaks to this hour’s need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth.

Rob Bell

Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking. All conversations with older people contain repetition. Some of the ideas mean a lot to me, just interesting, so I both embrace and attack the ideas because I found them, well, delightful.

Nikki Giovanni

We get excited by ideas, and we're more excited by being surprised by ideas than we are in dictating the course of events. We've found that leads to more interesting storytelling.

Joe Russo

A Quote by Susan Sontag

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