Quotes by John Berger

About John Berger:

John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

John Berger

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

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.

John Berger

I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.

John Berger

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

John Berger

A line, an area of tone, is not really important because it records what you have seen, but because of what it will lead you on to see. Following up its logic in order to check its accuracy, you find confirmation or denial in the object itself or in ...

John Berger

The human quality Degas most admired was endurance.

John Berger

I actually think of myself as quite a shy person, although I know I give the impression of someone much more confident. I think what I do have is a capacity to listen to the other, even if the other is an opponent. That leads, in all senses of the wo...

John Berger

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 and dusky. It may be around an elbow, a heel, an armpit, a calf muscle, the nape of ...

John Berger

In Degas's compositions with several dancers, their steps, postures and gestures often resemble the almost geometric, formal letters of an alphabet, whereas their bodies and heads are recalcitrant, sinuous and individual.

John Berger

Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.

John Berger

Boycott is not a principle. When it becomes one, it itself risks becoming exclusive and racist. No boycott, in our sense of the term, should be directed against an individual, a people, or a nation as such.

John Berger

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.

John Berger

Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one's self to be bored.

John Berger

You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.

John Berger

In ethics, there is a humility; moralists are usually righteous.

John Berger

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

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

John Berger

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

John Berger

I very seldom read back into what I've written.

John Berger

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Berger
  • DescriptionBritish painter, writer and art critic
  • BornNovember 5, 1926
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Art Historian; Writer; Painter
  • AwardsJames Tait Black Memorial Prize