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It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.

John Berger

The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Look Offer Opportunity Public Purpose Visitor Zoos
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
JOHN BERGER

Age Believe City Every Nothing Sex Teenager
Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.
JOHN BERGER

Basic Best Compassion Necessity Oppose Order Therefore World
Writers who have neither product utopian trash.
JOHN BERGER

Neither Product Truth Utopian Writer
Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers.
JOHN BERGER

Constellation First Invented Named Night Sky Star Storyteller
We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.
JOHN BERGER

Accident Anything Birth Impossible Injustice May Nothing Remain
[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.
JOHN BERGER

Art Future Innocent Judge never Often Past Revenge Shown Suffer
The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.
JOHN BERGER

Confine Difficulty Dog Dream Human Imagination Live Materialist Philosophy Practice Strict
History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past
JOHN BERGER

Always Constitute History Past Present Relation
This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
JOHN BERGER

Determine Effection Men Most Only Relation Relationship Themselves Wome
Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.
JOHN BERGER

Absence Painting Presence Real Something Thing
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

Dwelling Home Hostile Language Men Place Potentially
Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
JOHN BERGER

Alive Cicadas Legend Poem Poet Quiet Soul
In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.
JOHN BERGER

Average Country Men never Painting Presume Principal Protagonist Rude Spectator
Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.
JOHN BERGER

Character Death Modern Notion Spectular Time Transferred
Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.
JOHN BERGER

Death Flirting Flow Life Photography

It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.

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It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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