John Berger

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

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

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and read more

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.

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result read more

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. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of read more

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.

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to read more

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.