One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating.
JOHN BERGERWhat distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves.
More John Berger Quotes
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For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal
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Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it.
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Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.
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To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen….
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Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity.
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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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Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.
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The heart of Paris is like nothing so much as the unending interior of a house.
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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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What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind.
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The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.
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The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man.
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It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.
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The woman’s sexual passion needs to be minimized, so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly on such passion
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Whenever the intensity of looking reaches a certain degree, one becomes aware of an equally intense energy coming towards one through the appearance of whatever it is one is scrutinizing.
JOHN BERGER






