The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight. — John Berger Copy Share Image
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. — John Berger Copy Share
The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter… — John Berger Copy Share
Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became exchangeable because everything… — John Berger Copy Share
Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which… — John Berger Copy Share
We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries. — John Berger Copy Share
My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies. Later alone it wore poems for clothes. Like a shirt I carried on my back the… — John Berger Copy Share
There's the artist's intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn]. Picasso drawings are like that... the… — John Berger Copy Share
Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature… — John Berger Copy Share
In drawing after drawing, pastel after pastel, painting after painting, the contours of Degas's dancing figures become, at a certain point, darkly insistent, tangled… — John Berger Copy Share
We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. — John Berger Copy Share
We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death.… — John Berger Copy Share
Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive… — John Berger Copy Share
“Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way.” — John Berger Copy Share
