270 Quotes by John Berger

The Cro-Magnons lived with fear and amazement in a culture of Arrival, facing many mysteries. Their culture lasted for some 20,000 years.

We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination

The opposite of love is not to hate but to separate. If love and hate have something in common it is because, in both cases, their energy is that of bringing and holding together

The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life.

The existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation. Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature

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

Hair is associated with sexual power. With passion. The woman's sexual passion needs to be minimized, so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly on such passion

To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one's fellow countrymen.... But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.

When a painter is working he is aware of the means which are available to him - these include his materials, the style he inherits, the conventions he must obey, his prescribed or freely chosen subject matter - as constituting both an opportunity and a restraint.