David Quotes

Great claims are being made for the photograph as truth. We are showing you things, we show you the war. I say you can't actually. The camera can't.

I can see that cinema seems to be finished. Everybody has a bigger screen at home. I'm assuming eventually you won't need a screen at all - these iPhones will just project.

The problem is, photographic dyes and printing inks aren't as good as paint, actually.

I'm convinced that technology and art go together - and always have, for centuries.

You can't believe any picture nowadays, if it's digital. You can't really believe. If you see me shaking hands with Mr. [Barack] Obama, it doesn't mean I ever met him, does it?

Photography sees surfaces, it doesn't see space. We see space but the camera doesn't.

I've never been interested in, much in the politics of the art world, it doesn't interest me.

I'm sure that the camera is part of European art.

The high-definition picture is still a perspective picture. That's the real problem, the perspective picture.

I find it hard to argue with Reagan's old slogan: Trust, but verify.

I think you're always trying to challenge yourself to do new things and not repeat yourself.

I'm like a decathlete without the body.

The incidence of memory is like light from dead stars whose influence lingers long after the events themselves.

People overestimate what they can accomplish in the near term and underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term.

If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else is going to. So go for it. Find what makes you happy and do it.

I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.

Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.

Apart from the representational content of an idea there is another component: its force and vivacity, its impetus.

.. the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.

From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.

All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.

Virtue, like wholesome food, is better than poisons, however corrected.

All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.

Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needsbe delightful and rejoicing.

Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.

of the world and drudgery of business , seeks a pretense of reason to give itself a full and uncontrolled indulgence.

There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.

Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.

The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.

Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: andhas often, in reality, the force ascribed to it.

Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.

Rousseau was mad but influential; Hume was sane but had no followers.

We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but 'tis vain to ask. Whether there be body or not? That is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science.

Interest is the barometer of the state.

The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration, which we form from the whole, is complete and entire.

Such is the nature of novelty that where anything pleases it becomes doubly agreeable if new; but if it displeases, it is doubly displeasing on that very account.

Even after the observation of the frequent conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.

When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.

It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.

Nothing is more favorable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent states, connected together by commerce and policy.

There are many forms of photography. I consider myself simply a recorder of that which I find of interest around me. I personally have no desire to create or stage direct ideas.

The most important piece of equipment after the camera is a good pair of shoes.

I'm a photographer, obviously. My chosen tool for understanding life, and communicating the results of this search to others, is the camera.

You are not a photographer because you are interested in photography.

I think of myself as a reportage photographer. I like the word. It implies a personal account of an observed event with connotations of subjectivity but honesty. It is eye-witness photography.

My advice is: learn from the best or teach yourself. And do not bother at all if you do not have an exaggerated sense of curiosity.

...one day I was speculating on how I would like to look back on life and I decided I wanted to feel that I was a photographer rather than a teacher. As simple as that.

I would always fall down the big main staircase in our house. My favorite thing in the world was to pretend to be horribly killed at the top of it, and to fall dramatically down to the bottom of it.