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Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

John Berger

The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
JOHN BERGER

Female Herself Object Sight Surveyed Turn Vision Woman
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
We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.
JOHN BERGER

Act Choice Look Only See
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.
JOHN BERGER

Accept Callous Human Inhuman Know Live Society Worth
Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements and accidents takes place.
JOHN BERGER

Achievement Behind Deceptive Landscape Life Seem Setting Sometimes Struggle Success
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
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
JOHN BERGER

Look Love Men Women
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
A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Away Become Fond Glad Peasant Pig Pigs Pork Two
If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
JOHN BERGER

Event Given Name Need Occurred Story
The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can’t do is to change its consequences.
JOHN BERGER

Consequences Exactly Past Prisoner Wish
The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.
JOHN BERGER

Cigarette Dialogue Noth Parentless Proscenium Shar Time
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
A photograph is a meeting place where the interests of the photographer, the photographed, the viewer and those who are using the photograph are often contradictory.
JOHN BERGER

Contradiction Interest Meeting Natural Photo Photographer Place Use Viewer
Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation.
JOHN BERGER

Choice Decision Given Photography Situation
I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often 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 Can Forgotten Innocent Judge Know Past Revenge Show

Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

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Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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