John Berger Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old John Berger quotes, John Berger sayings, and John Berger proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man. John Berger
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. John Berger
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. 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
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
All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different. John Berger
What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time. John Berger
Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself. John Berger
Cow dung and horse dung, as muck goes, are relatively agreeable. You can even become nostalgic about them. They smell of fermented grain, and on the far side of their smell there is hay and grass. John Berger
All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different. John Berger
Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite. John Berger
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. John Berger
Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress. John Berger
Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time. John Berger
Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress. John Berger
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. John Berger
The gap between what publicity actually offers and the future it promises, corresponds with the gap between what the spectator-buyer feels himself to be and what he would like to be.  John Berger
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. John Berger
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 John Berger
The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet 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. John Berger
Publicity is the life of this culture in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive and at the same time publicity is its dream. John Berger