John Berger Quotes about Past

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I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor.

John Berger

Art, Revenge, Past

John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.9, Vintage

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.

John Berger

Past, Wish, Prisoner

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

John Berger

Past, Dying, Grows

John Berger (2011). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos”, p.78, Vintage

[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. . . .

John Berger

Art, Revenge, Past

John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.9, Vintage

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

John Berger

Mean, Cutting, Past