Selected Essays of John Berger

Life, the Universe, the Void, have no value for thought when it is truly free. The only thing that has value for it is Meaning, that is the moral concept of the Impossible.’

It assumes that the truth is to be found in appearances which are therefore worth preserving by being represented. It assumes continuity in time as also in space.

This value of materiality was expressed through the illusion of tangibility

person loved is seen in the opposite way. Their contour or shape is not a surface encountered but an horizon which borders. A person loved is recognised not by attainments but by the verbs which can satisfy that person. His or her needs may be quite distinct from those of the lover, but they creat

Love is solitary even though it joins.

Normalization meant that between the different political systems, which share the control of almost the entire world, anything can be exchanged under the single condition that nothing anywhere is radically changed.

They do not know what has happened to them; and their poignancy lies in their ignorance. Yet

Man is an unhappy ape without knowing it

So that in the last analysis the great artist is first and foremost a man who has lived greatly (it being understood that in this case living also implies thinking about life – that living is in fact precisely this subtle relationship between experience and our awareness of it).’ In keeping with this tentative credo, Berger’s essays are all the time testing his life, probing and assessing it.

Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity; those who would like to seem profound … strive for obscurity.’