John Berger Quotes - Page 2

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• 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. Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.

  John Berger

  Animal, Men, Firsts

  John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.8, Bloomsbury Publishing

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Berger

  Past, Wish, Prisoner

  44 Copy quote

• Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

  John Berger

  Sex, Teenager, Believe

  John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.101, Vintage

  63 Copy quote

• That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.

  John Berger

  Beautiful, Nature, Believe

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.569, Vintage

  66 Copy quote

• When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.

  John Berger

  Wall, Book, Reading

  John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.15, Vintage

  42 Copy quote

• When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. 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

  Wall, Book, Reading

  John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.15, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

• Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it. You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn't work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

  John Berger

  Drawing, People, Trying

  John Berger (2007). “Here Is Where We Meet: A Story of Crossing Paths”, p.9, Vintage

  25 Copy quote

• The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time.

  John Berger

  Play, Invisible, Photograph

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.346, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. 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

  Grief, Loss, Childhood

  John Berger (2011). “A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor”, p.122, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.

  John Berger

  Marriage, Wedding, Different

  1985 The White Bird,'The Storyteller'.

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Berger

  Talking, Evil, Needs

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.762, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.

  John Berger

  Justice, Littles, Shouting

  5 Copy quote

• To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.

  John Berger

  Sight, Order, Naked

  "John Berger obituary" by Michael McNay, www.theguardian.com. January 2, 2017.

  6 Copy quote

• Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one's self to be bored.

  John Berger

  Dog, Blessing, Self

  20 Copy quote

• Without ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.

  John Berger

  Men, Choices, Priorities

  "The denial of true reflection" by John Berger, www.theguardian.com. August 20, 2006.

  6 Copy quote

• Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace. For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances.

  John Berger

  Art, Italian, Space

  "Past present" by John Berger, www.theguardian.com. October 12, 2002.

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Space, Giving, Normal

  John Berger (2009). “The Shape of a Pocket”, p.176, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

  John Berger

  Believe, Men, Cities

  John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.101, Vintage

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  John Berger

  Love, Hate, Opposites

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.73, Bloomsbury Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.

  John Berger

  God, Photography, Memories

  John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.44, Bloomsbury Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.

  John Berger

  Hands, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.

  John Berger

  Stories

  John Berger (2012). “G. John Berger”, p.133, A&C Black

  6 Copy quote

• The contradiction in perspective was that it structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who, unlike God, could only be in one place at a time.

  John Berger

  Reality, Perspective, Addresses

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  John Berger

  World, Facts, Seeing

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Struggle, Writing, Opposites

  "Q & A / John Berger / The moment of truth is now". Interview with Kenneth Baker, www.sfgate.com. January 6, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

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