We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.
JOHN BERGERIf every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
More John Berger Quotes
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For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances.
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There’s the artist’s intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn].
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The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.
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This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.
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A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist’s own needs; a ‘finished’ statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work – related far more directly to the demands of communication.
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Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.
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Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
JOHN BERGER -
Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace.
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The woman’s sexual passion needs to be minimized, so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly on such passion
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To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.
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The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.
JOHN BERGER -
Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.
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We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
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The opposite of love is not to hate but to separate. If love and hate have something in common it is because, in both cases, their energy is that of bringing and holding together
JOHN BERGER -
Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances.
JOHN BERGER