Collected Meditations
Showing 13 quotesOurs is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.— John Berger
topics:
Travel
A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis. The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. It's like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.— John Berger
topics:
Space
As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances. A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way.— John Berger
topics:
Power
Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.— John Berger
topics:
Poetry
Being a unique superpower undermines the military intelligence of strategy. To think strategically, one has to imagine oneself in the enemy's place. If one cannot do this, it is impossible to foresee, to take by surprise, to outflank. Misinterpreting an enemy can lead to defeat. This is how empires fall.— John Berger
topics:
Intelligence
Hope is not a form of guarantee; it's a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.— John Berger
topics:
Hope
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
topics:
Future
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.— John Berger
A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist's own needs; a 'finished' statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work - related far more directly to the demands of communication.— John Berger
topics:
Communication
Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.— John Berger
topics:
Communication