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Taste Tends To Develop Very Unevenly. It's Rare That The Same Person Has Good Visual Taste And Good Taste In People And Taste In Ideas.
-Susan Sontag
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Taste Tends To Develop

Susan Sontag
...
Taste Tends To Develop Very Unevenly. It's Rare That The Same Person Has Good Visual Taste And Good Taste In People And Taste In Ideas.

Understanding the Quote: "taste tends to develop very unevenly. it's rare that the same person..."

This quote by Susan Sontag reflects deeply on the theme of ideas. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Ideas, People, Taste, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Susan Sontag interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag is celebrated for insightful thoughts on ideas and people. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Ideas
People
Taste
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Waiting
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Mean
World
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Intellectual
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Past
Photographer
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Mean
Self
Jews And Homosexuals Are The Outstanding Creative Minorities In Contemporary Urban Culture. Creative, That Is, In The Truest Sense: They Are Creators Of Sensibilities. The Two Pioneering Forces Of Modern Sensibility Are Jewish Moral Seriousness And Homosexual Aestheticism And Irony.
Two
Creative
Culture
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Propaganda
Intention
Life Is A Movie; Death Is A Photograph.
Life Is
Photograph
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Poet
Units
Prose
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Art
Consciousness
Art Is
You Know That You Can't Make References To The Classics Any Longer And Less And Less To The English Classics Even.
Knows
One Set Of Messages Of The Society We Live In Is: Consume. Grow. Do What You Want. Amuse Yourselves. The Very Working Of This Economic System, Which Has Bestowed These Unprecedented Liberties, Most Cherished In The Form Of Physical Mobility And Material Prosperity, Depends On Encouraging People To Defy Limits.
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Fiction
Elements
The Photographer Is An Armed Version Of The Solitary Walker Reconnoitering, Stalking, Cruising The Urban Inferno, The Voyeuristic Stroller Who Discovers The City As A Landscape Of Voluptuous Extremes. Adept Of The Joys Of Watching, Connoisseur Of Empathy, The Flâneur Finds The World 'picturesque.
Cities
Empathy
Joy
Photographed Images Do Not Seem To Be Statements About The World So Much As Pieces Of It, Miniatures Of Reality That Anyone Can Make Or Acquire
Reality
Pieces
World
War-making Is One Of The Few Activities That People Are Not Supposed To View 'realistically'; That Is, With An Eye To Expense And Practical Outcome. In All-out War, Expenditure Is All-out, Unprudent – War Being Defined As An Emergency In Which No Sacrifice Is Excessive.
Peace
War
Eye
Camp Is Art That Proposes Itself Seriously, But Cannot Be Taken Altogether Seriously Because It Is 'too Much.
Art
Taken
Too Much
Photographs Trade Simultaneously On The Prestige Of Art And The Magic Of The Real.
Photography
Art
Real
To Patronize The Faculty Of Taste Is To Patronize Oneself. For Taste Governs Every Free - As Opposed To Rote - Human Response.
Taste
Faculty
Response
The Aim Of All Commentary On Art Now Should Be To Make Works Of Art - And, By Analogy, Our Own Experience - More, Rather Than Less, Real To Us. The Function Of Criticism Should Be To Show How It Is What It Is, Even That It Is What It Is, Rather Than To Show What It Means.
Art
Real
Mean
The Destiny Of Photography Has Taken It Far Beyond The Role To Which It Was Originally Thought To Be Limited: To Give More Accurate Reports On Reality (including Works Of Art). Photography Is The Reality; The Real Object Is Often Experienced As A Letdown.
Photography
Art
Real
That Tendency Of Social Thought To Generalize, To Describe A Leading Tendency In A Society In Such A Way That It Seems That Everything Falls Within Its Iron Laws, Is Very Common. Of Course Our Own Experience Tells Us That Life Is Not As Monochrome As These Thinkers Depict It. On The Other Hand They Are Very Valuable Because They Alert Us To Transformations We Are Likely To Take For Granted.
Fall
Hands
Law
Lying Is The Most Simple Form Of Self-defence.
Lying
Simple
Self
What Makes Me Feel Strong? Being In Love And Work. I Must Work.
Strong
Being In Love
Feels
Photography Is A Kind Of Overstatement, A Heroic Copulation With The Material World.
Photography
World
Heroic
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.
Hurt
Knowing
Giving
Fatal Illness Has Always Been Viewed As A Test Of Moral Character, But In The Nineteenth Century There Is A Great Reluctance To Let Anybody Flunk The Test.
Character
Tests
Moral
Pornography Is One Of The Branches Of Literature - Science Fiction Is Another - Aiming At Disorientation, At Psychic Dislocation.
Psychics
Fiction
Literature
Mallarme Said That Everything In The World Exists In Order To End In A Book. Today Everything Exists To End In A Photograph.
Photography
Book
Order
When Cartier-bresson Goes To China, He Shows That There Are People In China, And That They Are Chinese.
Photography
People
Chinese
I Don’t Care About Someone Being Intelligent; Any Situation Between People, When They Are Really Human With Each Other, Produces ‘intelligence.
Intelligent
People
Care
What I Really Wanted Was Every Kind Of Life, And The Writer’s Life Seemed The Most Inclusive.
Kind
Wanted
Growing Older Is Mainly An Ordeal Of The Imagination-a Moral Disease, A Social Pathology.
Imagination
Growing
Disease
When Comedy Fails, Seriousness Begins To Leak Back In.
Comedy
Failing
Leaks
In The United States It's Not Important Which Religion You Adhere To, As Long As You Have One.
Long
Important
United States
Talking Like Touching. Writing Like Punching Somebody.
Writing
Talking
Touching
No 'we' Should Be Taken For Granted When The Subject Is Looking At Other People's Pain.
Pain
Taken
People
I Was Fascinated By Quotations And Lists. And Then I Noticed That Other People Were Fascinated By Quotations And Lists: People As Different As Borges And Walter Benjamin, Novalis And Godard.
People
Different
Lists
In ‘life,’ I Don’t Want To Be Reduced To My Work. In ‘work,’ I Don’t Want To Be Reduced To My Life.
Want
A Photograph Is Not Only An Image (as A Painting Is An Image), An Interpretation Of The Real; It Is Also A Trace, Something Directly Stenciled Off The Real, Like A Footprint Or A Death Mask.
Photography
Real
Painting
Courage Is Morally Neutral.
Surrealism Can Only Deliver A Reactionary Judgment; Can Make Out Of History Only An Accumulation Of Oddities, A Joke, A Death Trip.
Oddities
Judgment
Accumulation
I Write Essays First Because I Have A Passionate Relationship To The Subject And Second Because The Subject Is One That People Are Not Talking About.
Writing
Talking
People
[t]he Visibility Of Styles Is Itself A Product Of Historical Consciousness. ... The Very Notion Of "style" Needs To Be Approached Historically. Awareness Of Style As A Problematic And Isolable Element In A Work Of Art Has Emerged In The Audience For Art Only At Certain Historical Moments - As A Front Behind Which Other Issues, Ultimately Ethical And Political, Are Being Debated.
Art
Issues
Political
The Hard Truth Is That What May Be Acceptable In Elite Culture May Not Be Acceptable In Mass Culture, That Tastes Which Pose Only Innocent Ethical Issues As The Property Of A Minority Become Corrupting When They Become More Established. Taste Is Context, And The Context Has Changed.
Ethical Issues
Mass Culture
Minorities
Photographs Shock Insofar As They Show Something Novel.
Photograph
Shock
Novel
It's Not 'natural' To Speak Well, Eloquently, In An Interesting, Articulate Way. People Living In Groups, Families, Communes Say Little - Have Few Verbal Means. Eloquence - Thinking In Words - Is A Byproduct Of Solitude, Deracination, A Heightened Painful Individuality. In Groups, It's More Natural To Sing, To Dance, To Pray: Given, Rather Than Invented (individual) Speech.
Mean
Thinking
Interesting
So Successful Has Been The Camera's Role In Beautifying The World That Photographs, Rather Than The World, Have Become The Standard Of The Beautiful.
Beautiful
Photography
Successful
The White Race Is The Cancer Of Human History.
Cancer
Race
White
Desire Has No History.
Desire
What We Need Is To Use What We Have.
Use It Or Lose It
Needs
Use
You Can Go Into All Sorts Of Situations With A Camera And People Will Think They Should Serve It.
Photography
Thinking
People
Camp Is A Solvent Of Morality. It Neutralizes Moral Indignation, Sponsors Playfulness.
Morality
Sponsors
Moral Indignation
Existence Is No More Than The Precarious Attainment Of Relevance In An Intensely Mobile Flux Of Past, Present, And Future.
Past
Flux
Existence
Experiences Aren't Pornographic; Only Images And Representations - Structures Of The Imagination - Are.
Imagination
Structure
Pornography
Photographs Are A Way Of Imprisoning Reality, Understood As Recalcitrant, Inaccessible; Of Making It Stand Still. Or They Enlarge A Reality That Is Felt To Be Shrunk, Hollowed Out, Perishable, Remote. One Can't Possess Reality, One Can Possess (and Be Possessed By) Images.
Photography
Reality
Way
A Family's Photograph Album Is Generally About The Extended Family And, Often, Is All That Remains Of It.
Photography
Cousin
Often Is
There Are Some Elements In Life - Above All, Sexual Pleasure - About Which It Isn't Necessary To Have A Position.
Elements
Pleasure
Position
The Becoming Of Man Is The History Of The Exhaustion Of His Possibilities.
Men
History
Becoming
Nothing Is Mysterious, No Human Relation. Except Love.
Love
Mysterious
Relation
Each Generation Has To Reinvent Spirituality.
Generations
Spirituality
In Photographing Dwarfs, You Don't Get Majesty & Beauty. You Get Dwarfs.
Photography
Majesty
Dwarfs
The Way In Which A Certain Kind Of Political Idealism Has Been Discredited And Scorned Makes The Danger Not That Intellectuals Keep On Making Fools Of Themselves, Formulating Political Opinions When They Might Not Be As Informed As They Might Be, But That They Retreat And Leave Politics To The Professionals.
Political Opinions
Might
Way
Most Of My Reading Is Rereading.
Reading
Rereading
It Is Not The Position, But The Disposition.
Inspirational
Motivational
Attitude
The Purpose Of Art Is Always, Ultimately, To Give Pleasure - Though Our Sensibilities May Take Time To Catch Up With The Forms Of Pleasure That Art In A Given Time May Offer.
Art
Giving
Purpose
Never Worry About Being Obsessive. I Like Obsessive People. Obsessive People Make Great Art
Art
People
Worry
The Painter Constructs, The Photographer Discloses.
Photography
Pain
Photographer
Superficial To Understand The Journal As Just A Receptable For One's Private, Secret Thoughts - Like A Confidante Who Is Deaf, Dumb, And Illiterate. In The Journal I Do Not Just Express Myself More Openly Than I Could To Any Person; I Create Myself. ... The Journal Is A Vehicle For My Sense Of Selfhood. It Represents Me As Emotionally And Spiritually Independent. Therefore (alas) It Does Not Simply Record My Actual, Daily Life But Rather - In Many Cases - Offers An Alternative To It.
Independent
Dumb
Secret
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