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The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

John Berger

Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible.
JOHN BERGER

Capitalism Country Define Exploit Interest Majority Narrow Possible Survive Today
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER

Book Cover Four Inhabit Reading Roof Wall
We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.
JOHN BERGER

Act Choice Look Only See
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

Burden Camera Forget God Like Memories Photography Relieve Survey Us Yet
There’s the artist’s intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn].
JOHN BERGER

Artist Drawing Drawn Equal Intimacy Other Truthfulness
Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home.
JOHN BERGER

Beloved Clothes Home Honeycomb Like Lip Milk Smell Tongue
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.
JOHN BERGER

Before Century Poverty Priorities Result Scarcity Set World
Hair is associated with sexual power. With passion.
JOHN BERGER

Associate Hair Need Passion Sexual
Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.
JOHN BERGER

Behind Bourgeois Building Conservatories Door Furniture Galleries Go House Shutting Street Way
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
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.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Communication Drawing Finished Need Only Private Public Relate Statue Work
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
Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.
JOHN BERGER

Contraband Hand Stories
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama.
JOHN BERGER

Actor Art Before Both Bring Cinema Compare Drama Dramatix Nature Public Right Season
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
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

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

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The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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