“The words that come direct from the people are the greatest.If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.”

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.

No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.

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

Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.

Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.

Any effects created before 1975 were done with either tape or echo chambers or some kind of acoustic treatment. No magic black boxes!

Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal – a sort of ‘voting’ situation.

THINK before you speak. Is it True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, Kind?

Before we can pray, “Lord, Thy Kingdom come,” we must be willing to pray, “My Kingdom go.”

I have this eerie feeling that by the time I’m 33, reality will not exist in the same plane as it did before.

Such lightening and thunder will come there has never been seen before, bringing death and destruction.