What any true painting touches is an absence – an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.
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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The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals.
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Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.
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As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances.
JOHN BERGER -
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
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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.
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To be naked is to be oneself.
JOHN BERGER -
The essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic.
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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 -
We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.
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Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered.
JOHN BERGER -
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER