Let’s agree there is such a thing as inner freedom. Then I would say that art has a role of building or enlarging various senses of inner freedom, in opposition to various senses of tyranny. For if there are other senses of freedom than the usual political sense, there are other senses of tyranny or oppression or totalitarianism than the kind exemplified by secret police and gulags and lagers, and the imperial takeovers of small countries. There is also the tyranny of inanity. There is also the tyranny of shallowness. There is also the tyranny of mindlessness. There is also the tyranny of a culture that makes people ashamed of being serious—that severs the links between their consciousness and their lives, which makes seriousness possible. This suggests another oppositional role for culture, another way that the arts can defend human dignity.

—Susan Sontag in conversation with Vytautas Landsbergis, Nam June Paik, and Jonas Mekas, 1994

(via Tone Glow)