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To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.

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.
JOHN BERGER

Communication Emotive Network Pace Permanent Propaganda Reflection Require Slogan Stifie Systematically
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

Enjoy Hand Look Mirror Morally Naked Paint Painting Pleasure Vanity Women
Later alone it wore poems for clothes. Like a shirt I carried on my back the poetry I had read. So I lived for half a century until wordlessly we met. From my shirt on the back of the chair I learn tonight how many years of learning by heart I waited for you.
JOHN BERGER

Alone Carry Century Chair Clothes Heart Later Learn Like Live Poem Poet Read Want
The power of the glamorous resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the bureaucrat in his supposed authority.
JOHN BERGER

Authority Bureaucrat Glamorous Happiness Power Reside Suppose
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
Writers who have neither product utopian trash.
JOHN BERGER

Neither Product Truth Utopian Writer
Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.
JOHN BERGER

Action Choice Determine Ethics Priorities Suggests
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
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

Both Case Common Hate Love Opposite Separate Something
A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis.
JOHN BERGER

Arches Breathing Cigarettes Parentless Space
It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.
JOHN BERGER

Between Explicit Fully Make Relationship Stories Trying Universal Usually Writing
The unsung, impersonal world remains outside, on the other surface of a placenta. All songs, even when their content or rendering is strongly masculine, operate maternally.
JOHN BERGER

All Content Impersonal Maternity Operate Outside Placenta Remain Song Surface
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
What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind.
JOHN BERGER

Achieve All Art Cinema Mankind People Save Sky Spontaneous
You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest – if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
JOHN BERGER

Bureaucrat Greater Illusion Impersonal Interest Observe Others Power Themselves
It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it
JOHN BERGER

Establish Explain Fact Facts Place Seeing Surround Undo Word World

To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.

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To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.

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