Without ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself.
JOHN BERGERWe who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination
More John Berger Quotes
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Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.
JOHN BERGER -
The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product.
JOHN BERGER -
You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.
JOHN BERGER -
The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it’s something that theatre can do, but it’s rare; it’s very rare.
JOHN BERGER -
[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 -
The woman’s sexual passion needs to be minimized, so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly on such passion
JOHN BERGER -
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 -
All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.
JOHN BERGER -
Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers.
JOHN BERGER -
Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature
JOHN BERGER -
Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.
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Whenever he looked he saw the labour of existence; and this labour, recognised as such, was what constituted reality for him. (On Vincent Van Gogh)
JOHN BERGER -
You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.
JOHN BERGER -
Picasso drawings are like that… the Rembrandts are like that. The artist who most often did that was Van Gogh.
JOHN BERGER -
Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.
JOHN BERGER






