John Berger Quotes: top 83 famous quotes about John Berger

John Berger Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational John Berger quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The precondition for thinking politically on a global scale is to see the unity of the unnecessary suffering taking place. * — John Berger

What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss. — John Berger

Anybody who passes more than a day in eternity is as old as God could ever be. — John Berger

The garden is a kind of sanctuary. — John Berger

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences. — John Berger

Every city has a sex and age which have nothing to do with demography. — John Berger

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true. — John Berger

Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages; it is a language itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal — John Berger

Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way. — John Berger

The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man. — John Berger

All creation is in the art of seeing. — John Berger

She was now the center of what surrounded her. All that was not her made space for her. — John Berger

Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one's self to be bored. — John Berger

Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all. — John Berger

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma. — John Berger

Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story. — John Berger

What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. — John Berger

The Creationists, like all bigots, derive their fervour from rejection
the more they can reject, the more righteous they themselves feel. — John Berger

Men watch. Women watch themselves being watched. — John Berger

Photographs do not translate from appearances. They quote from them. — John Berger

A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either. It's more like a fleeting, subjective impression. — John Berger

We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. — John Berger

Until 1954, I'd only ever thought of being a painter, but I earned my money when and where I could. You could say I drifted into writing. — John Berger

The zoo cannot but disappoint. — John Berger

Mystification has little to do with the vocabulary used. Mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident — John Berger

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time. — John Berger

History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past — John Berger

Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form. — John Berger

The living reduce the dead to those who have lived; yet the dead already include the living in their own great collective. — John Berger

The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life. — John Berger

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. — John Berger

Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying? — John Berger

If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories. — John Berger

The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time. — John Berger

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. — John Berger

There is no word in any traditional European language which does not either denigrate or patronize the urban poor it is naming. That is power. — John Berger

You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events. — John Berger

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. — John Berger

Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one. — John Berger

Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant. — John Berger

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress. — John Berger

If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger. — John Berger

We who draw do so not only to make something visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination. — John Berger

To be naked is to be oneself. — John Berger

To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself. — John Berger

Perspective is not a science but a hope. — John Berger

The promise is that again and again from the garbage the scattered feathers the ashes and broken bodies something new and beautiful may be born — John Berger

Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors reminding them of how they look or how they should look. Behind every glance there is judgment. — John Berger

Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite. — John Berger

I very seldom read back into what I've written. — John Berger

Publicity is in essence, nostalgic. It has to sell the past to the future... According to publicity, to be sophisticated is to live beyond conflict. — John Berger

Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence. — John Berger

Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home. — John Berger

We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. — John Berger

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying. — John Berger

Never again will a single story be told as though its the only one. — John Berger

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. — John Berger

All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different. — John Berger

To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal. — John Berger

Preachers love only their own voices. — John Berger

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries. — John Berger

Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated. — John Berger

The silence after a felled tree has fallen is like the silence immediately after a death. The same sense of culmination. — John Berger

A drawing of a tree shows not a tree but a tree being looked at — John Berger

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. — John Berger

The human quality Degas most admired was endurance. — John Berger

Hold Everything Dear — John Berger

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream. — John Berger

The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product. — John Berger

All its dimensions with their projected geometries are those of an unrealisible dream. — John Berger

The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer. — John Berger

Hope is not a form of guarantee; it's a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark. — John Berger

To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant. — John Berger

'Fahrenheit 9/11' is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event. — John Berger

In ethics, there is a humility; moralists are usually righteous. — John Berger

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time. — John Berger

I have never thought of writing as a profession. It is a solitary independent activity in which practice can never bestow seniority. — John Berger

The Cro-Magnons lived with fear and amazement in a culture of Arrival, facing many mysteries. Their culture lasted for some 20,000 years. — John Berger

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass. — John Berger

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man. — John Berger

Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death. — John Berger

All publicity works upon anxiety. — John Berger

To become bored with eating is to be bored with life. — John Berger