John Berger Quotes

A collection of quotes by John Berger.

John Berger (1926-2017) was a British art critic, novelist, and painter known for his influential contributions to the field of visual arts. Born in London, Berger studied at the Chelsea School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design before beginning his career as a painter. However, his passion for the written word eventually led him to become one of the most renowned art critics of his time.

Berger's groundbreaking work, "Ways of Seeing" (1972), explored the relationship between visual culture, art, and society, challenging traditional ways of understanding and interpreting art. The book, accompanied by a BBC television series, revolutionized art criticism by examining how class, gender, and cultural perspectives shape our perception of art.

Apart from his work as a critic, Berger was a prolific novelist and essayist. He authored numerous books, including the acclaimed "G." (1972), which won the Booker Prize, and the trilogy "Into Their Labours" (1979-1991). His writings often delved into political themes, exploring the struggles of marginalized individuals in a capitalist society.

Throughout his career, Berger's unorthodox approach to art criticism, combined with his rich storytelling abilities, challenged and inspired generations of readers and artists. He left a lasting impact on the field of art criticism, expanding its scope and demonstrating the deeper social and cultural meanings embedded within works of art.

All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: w

All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity -- their links with their dead and the unborn.

Nationalism Nation Nationality

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a co

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.

Wealth

One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cy

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. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.

Doctors

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dyi

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

Past

The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is i

The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.

Media

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they ar

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

Envy / Jealousy

Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties s

Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying?

Boredom

Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages;

Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages; it is a language itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal

Advertising

The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what

The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it's something that theatre can do, but it's rare; it's very rare.

Art

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys u

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.

Photography

A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course,

A man's death makes everything certain about him. Of course, secrets may die with him. And of course, a hundred years later somebody looking through some papers may discover a fact which throws a totally different light on his life and of which all the people who attended his funeral were ignorant. Death changes the facts qualitatively but not quantitatively. One does not know more facts about a man because he is dead. But what one already knows hardens and becomes definite. We cannot hope for ambiguities to be clarified, we cannot hope for further change, we cannot hope for more. We are now the protagonists and we have to make up our minds.

Death

Nakedness reveals itself.Nudity is placed on display.The nud

Nakedness reveals itself.Nudity is placed on display.The nude is condemned to neverbeing naked.Nudity is a form of dress.

Nudity

Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do wit

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.

Cities

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It i

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.

Poverty

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch the

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

Men & Women

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles.

Politics

That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we ar

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.

Alone