“We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare”

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.

Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.

A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned.

Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

Sometimes they are a matter of luck, sometimes of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that you have seen. It is usually some incidental detail that heightens the effect of a picture, stressing a pattern, deepening the sense of atmosphere.

It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of a child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country

I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work.

No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.

I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.

The good photographer will produce a competent picture every time whatever his subject. But only when his subject makes and immediate and direct appeal to his own interests will he produce a work of distinction.

By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule.

When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera, and instead of photographing what I saw,

Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared…

But I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.

I definitely take time to smell the flowers because I feel like my upbringing was quite a bit different than most guys on Tour.

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature. And the greatest of these, at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature.

One of the most graceful of warriors is the robin. I know few prettier sights than two males challenging and curveting about each other upon the grass in early spring. Their attentions to each other are so courteous and restrained.

I’m not the most religous person in the world, but I think the good Lord up there has blessed me.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security.