John Berger

The zoo cannot but disappoint.

— John Berger

Today the discredit of words is very great.

— John Berger

“Hold Everything Dear”

— John Berger

To be naked is to be oneself.

— John Berger

Perspective is not a science but a hope.

— John Berger

All creation is in the art of seeing.

— John Berger

All publicity works upon anxiety.

— John Berger

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

— John Berger

In ethics, there is a humility; moralists are usually righteous.

— John Berger

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

— John Berger

You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.

— John Berger

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

— John Berger

All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.

— John Berger

“Anybody who passes more than a day in eternity is as old as God could ever be.”

— John Berger

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.

— John Berger

A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence . .…

— John Berger

“Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot…

— John Berger

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What…

— John Berger

A boycott is directed against a policy and the institutions which support that policy either actively or tacitly. Its aim is not…

— John Berger

What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind.

— John Berger

The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the…

— John Berger

If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.

— John Berger

We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.

— John Berger

The industrial society... recognises nothing except the power to acquire... No other kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can any longer…

— John Berger

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also…

— John Berger

It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all…

— John Berger

“Accept the unknown. There are no secondary characters. Each one is silhouetted against the sky. All have the same stature. Within a…

— John Berger

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision…

— John Berger

All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as…

— John Berger

When a painter is working he is aware of the means which are available to him - these include his materials, the…

— John Berger

To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one's fellow countrymen… But toemigrate…

— John Berger

“What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones…

— John Berger

“Consider the term Mother Tongue. In Russian the term is Rodnoi-yazyk, which means Nearest or Dearest Tongue. At a pinch one could…

— John Berger

The heart of Paris is like nothing so much as the unending interior of a house. Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets…

— John Berger

“Poems, even when narrative, do not resemble stories. All stories are about battles, of one kind or another, which end in victory…

— John Berger

“[...] For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the…

— John Berger

“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across…

— John Berger

Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them…

— John Berger

Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened.…

— John Berger

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

— John Berger