John Berger quotes

John Berger was a British art critic, novelist, and painter, renowned for his influential work "Ways of Seeing." His writings explored social and political themes in art, challenging traditional perspectives. He inspired generations to rethink the relationship between art, society, and everyday life. Here are 65 of his quotes:

A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. 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)
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. View quote
John Berger
Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress. View quote
John Berger
What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time. View quote
John Berger
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form. View quote
John Berger
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. View quote
John Berger
Yet why should an artist's way of looking at the world have any meaning for us? Why does it give us pleasure? Because, I believe, it increases our awareness of our own potentiality. Not of course our awareness of our potentiality as artists ourselves. But a way of looking at the world implies a certain relationship with the world, and every relationship implies action. The kind of actions implied vary a great deal. ... A work of art can, to some extent, increase an awareness of different potentialities in different people. The important point is that a valid work of art promises in some way or another the possibility of an increase, an improvement. Nor need the word be optimistic to achieve this; indeed, its subject may be tragic. For it is not the subject that makes the promise, it is the artist's way of viewing his subject. Goya's way of looking at a massacre amounts to the contention that we ought to be able to do without massacres. View quote
John Berger
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. View quote
John Berger
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. View quote
John Berger
To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal. View quote
John Berger
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)
Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma. View quote
John Berger
You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events. View quote
John Berger
Animals are born, are sentient and are mortal. In these things they resemble man. In their superficial anatomy - less in their deep anatomy - in their habits, in their time, in their physical capacities, they differ from man. They are both like and unlike. View quote
John Berger
Publicity is usually explained and justified as a competitive medium which ultimately benefits the public (the consumer) and the most efficient manufacturers - and thus the national economy. It is closely related to certain ideas about freedom: freedom of choice for the purchaser: freedom of enterprise for the manufacturer. The great hoardings and the publicity neons of the cities of capitalism are the immediate visible sign of "The Free World." For many in Eastern Europe such images in the West sum up what they in the East lack. Publicity, it is thought, offers a free choice. View quote
John Berger
Nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal's gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically. ... That look between animal and man, which may have played a crucial role in the development of human society, and with which, in any case, all men had always lived until less than a century ago, has been extinguished. Looking at each animal, the unaccompanied zoo visitor is alone. View quote
John Berger
The uniqueness of every painting was once part of the uniqueness of the place where it resided. View quote
John Berger
To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant. View quote
John Berger
You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting "Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure. View quote
John Berger
A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence... defines what can and cannot be done to her. View quote
John Berger
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)
Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home. View quote
John Berger
What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss. View quote
John Berger
If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories. View quote
John Berger
Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one. View quote
John Berger