By contrast, a woman’s presence… defines what can and cannot be done to her.
JOHN BERGERThis determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
More John Berger Quotes
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Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity.
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We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.
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The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.
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In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.
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A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way.
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Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
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It 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
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A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork.
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We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.
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The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it’s something that theatre can do, but it’s rare; it’s very rare.
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Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.
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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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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.
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What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.
JOHN BERGER -
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.
JOHN BERGER