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You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

John Berger

If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.
JOHN BERGER

Contribute Memories Photograph Stranger Unknowable
Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.
JOHN BERGER

Different Forget Look Meaning Pain Remember Thing
Nothing fortuitous happens in a child’s world. There are no accidents. Everything is connected with everything else and everything can be explained by everything else. . . . For a young child everything that happens is a necessity.
JOHN BERGER

Child Children Fortuitouus Happen Nothing World Young
She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.
JOHN BERGER

Envy Herself Imagine Justify Loving Menat Object Other Product Transform
To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.
JOHN BERGER

Ignorant Innocent May Remain
Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one’s self to be bored.
JOHN BERGER

Accustom Blessing Bored Chain Dog Sausage Self
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

Back Herself Love Offer Price Product Publicity Stealing
In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles.
JOHN BERGER

Anywhere Consequences Every Hour Modern People Political Politics Thousand Writing
Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.
JOHN BERGER

Chosen Emigration Experience Forced Metropolis National Time Village
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
By contrast, a woman’s presence… defines what can and cannot be done to her.
JOHN BERGER

Contrast Define Done Her Presence Women
Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.
JOHN BERGER

Contraband Hand Stories
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set.
JOHN BERGER

Between Know Relation Settle
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
Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
JOHN BERGER

Believe City Country Love Man Men Older Twenties Woman
Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.
JOHN BERGER

Death Flirting Flow Life Photography

You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

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You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Berger Quotes