“No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.”

I’ve never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning – but some phase of photographer I’ve always been.

I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal.

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.

I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.

No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually … I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare look at ourselves.

This benefit of seeing…can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image…the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.

To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.

A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.

Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.

It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.

The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else’s requirement but your own.

I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.

Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can’t see watches you.

It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.

Paris is a city of centralisation–and centralisation and classification are closely allied. In the early times, when centralisation is becoming a fact, its forerunner is classification. All things which are similar or analogous become grouped together, and from the grouping of groups rises one whole or central point.

I don’t think I am a citizen of the world; I am very much a citizen of my own country. But my own country is closely related to other parts of the world and influenced by what happens there.

On a sea floor that looks like a sandy mud bottom, that at first glance might appear to be sand and mud, when you look closely and sit there as I do for a while and just wait, all sorts of creatures show themselves, with little heads popping out of the sand. It is a metropolis.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

The more closely you get in touch with your dreams, the more able you are to make them real.

Unprecedented warnings by officials most closely linked with nuclear arms negotiations and defense strategy indicate that we are running out of time.

The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.

if you watch him closely, his mouth is gonna curl to the expression that he’s drawing.