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It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

John Berger

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 BERGER

Abstract Actual Cynical Disillusioned Doctor Fundamental Idealism Knowing Life Precise Reason Treat
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER

Book Cover Four Inhabit Reading Roof Wall
Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
JOHN BERGER

Alive Cicadas Legend Poem Poet Quiet Soul
Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.
JOHN BERGER

Appearance Capital Equality Everything Object Oil Painting Reduce Relation Social
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
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
The woman’s sexual passion needs to be minimized, so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly on such passion
JOHN BERGER

Feel May Minimize Monopoly Need Passion Sexual Spectator Such Women
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
What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.
JOHN BERGER

Connect Difficult Significant Statement Strange Understand
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
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
Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.
JOHN BERGER

Experience Give Giving Moment Narrative Normal Offer Planet Public Sense Space
If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
JOHN BERGER

Community Everything Exist Meaningless Photograph
Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.
JOHN BERGER

Communication Emotive Network Pace Permanent Propaganda Reflection Require Slogan Stifie Systematically
Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it.
JOHN BERGER

Decide Draw Drawing Everything People Question Trying Yourself
What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.
JOHN BERGER

Everything Four Happen Make Place Possible Story Take Wall

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

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It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

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