Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
JOHN BERGERIt 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
More John Berger Quotes
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History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past
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Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.
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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
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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.
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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.
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If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
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Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant.
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Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.
JOHN BERGER -
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.
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Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
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A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis.
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Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature
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All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.
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When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER -
Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.
JOHN BERGER