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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

What 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.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Capacity Development First Human In Language Men Separate Signal Symbolic
Writers who have neither product utopian trash.
JOHN BERGER

Neither Product Truth Utopian Writer
It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.
JOHN BERGER

Art Bourgeoisie Cinema Discover Learn People Popular Princes Single Sky Vagrant
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set.
JOHN BERGER

Between Know Relation Settle
To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.
JOHN BERGER

Beauty Naked Oneself Recognise Seen
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

Argument Diversion Opposite Same Screen Struggle Towards Truthfulness Use Word Writing
What do drawings mean to me? I really don’t know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don’t think happens with any other activity.
JOHN BERGER

Absorb Activity Draw Else Everything Forget Happen Mean Think Thinking
All publicity works upon anxiety.
JOHN BERGER

Anxiety Publicity Upon Work
A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you.
JOHN BERGER

Capable Contrast Done Men Presence Suggest You
Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something.
JOHN BERGER

Almost Being Certainly Certainty Need Painting Pianist Something
The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product.
JOHN BERGER

Buy Buyer Envy Herself Imagine Meant Product Spectator
To be naked is to be oneself.
JOHN BERGER

Be Naked Oneself
A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
JOHN BERGER

Everything Meamimgless Object Particular Photograph Recording Result
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

Continual Define Poetry Reassembking Repair Scattered Separate Space
My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies.
JOHN BERGER

Born Clothes Heart Lullabies Swaddled Year
When he painted a road, the roadmakers were there in his imagination, when he painted the turned earth of a ploughed field, the gesture of the blade turning the earth was included in his own act.
JOHN BERGER

Earth Field Gesture Imagination Paint Ploughed Reality Road Roadmaker Turn Warth

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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