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.

The human imagination... has great difficulty in living stri

The human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.

Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. Th

Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.

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

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or f

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

What makes photography a strange invention is that its prima

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a k

Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened. Rostropovich was playing his cello by the Wall that no longer cast a shadow, and a million East Berliners were thronging to the West to shop with an allowance given them by West German banks! At that moment the whole world saw how materialism had lost its awesome historic power and become a shopping list.

Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who

Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant. This ideology is compounded from different sources: items that have survived from religion, items of empirical knowledge, items of protective skepticism, items culled for comfort from the superficial learning that is supplied. But the point is that common-sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits, for as soon as the lack of fundamental learning has been made good, all items become questionable and the whole function of common-sense is destroyed. Common-sense can only exist as a category insofar as it can be distinguished from the spirit of inquiry, from philosophy.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world wh

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why --but the editorialists forget it --terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.

Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an o

Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book

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.

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a renderi

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a sponta

What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.

Film / Filmmaking / Movies

Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Dea

Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. The

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.

Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be re

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.

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because

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.

One can say of language that it is potentially the only huma

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.