You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

I bought my first camera in Seattle, Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it.

Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well.

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

But I was very disappointed that I didn't get a chance to go overseas with that group, might not have gotten back but I wanted very much to go because there's not much of a record of the exploits of the first Negro fighter group.

There's another horizon out there, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know.

The man at Kodak told me the shots were very good and if I kept it up, they would give me an exhibition. Later, Kodak gave me my first exhibition.

I've been with Life now for seventeen years and I have written several articles for them and will be doing more writing and do at least two assignments a year besides my writing.

So I went to Chicago in 1940, I think, '41, and the photographs that I made there, aside from fashion, were things that I was trying to express in a social conscious way.

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

People in millenniums ahead will know what we were like in the 1930's and the thing that, the important major things that shaped our history at that time. This is as important for historic reasons as any other.

I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.

I was there less than a year before I was assigned to the Paris bureau. I spent two years there and, in fact, before I even went on the staff I was sent to Europe to do assignments which they wouldn't normally do for a young photographer just starting out.

The photographer begins to feel big and bloated and so big he can't walk through one of these doors because he gets a good byline; he gets notices all over the world and so forth; but they're really - the important people are the people he photographs.

I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense, of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done.

But I do feel a little teeny right now that I'm just about ready to start, and winter is entering. Half past autumn has arrived.

And now, I feel at 85, I really feel that I'm just ready to start.

At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it.

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.

You know the camera is not meant just to show misery.

The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination against poverty against racism.

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.

The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

The rare pleasure of being seen for what one is, compensates for the misery of being it.

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

By adversity are wrought the greatest works of admiration, and all the fair examples of renown, out of distress and misery are grown.

He gave to misery (all he had) a tear.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

If misery loves company, then triumph demands an audience.

I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death... I think... peace and tranquillity will return again.

Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.

Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man's restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

Nearly all the powerful people of this age are unbelievers, the best of them in doubt and misery, the most in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can, what practical work lies at hand.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

It's been a misery for me, living with Christine Keeler.

I am talking about misery and all of its implications.

You don't necessarily have to be in misery to be talented.