I had known poverty firsthand, but there I learned how to fight its evil - along with the evil of racism - with a camera.

I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

I feel it is the heart, not the eye, that should determine the content of the photograph. What the eye sees is its own. What the heart can perceive is a very different matter.

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

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.

Nothing came easy. I was just born with a need to explore every part of my mind. And with long searching and hard work, I became devoted to my restlessness.

You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver)

I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.

If you don't have anything to say, your photographs aren't going to say much.

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

Then he looked back to me, and smiled. It was a terrible expression, filled with edges, and with knives.

I'm not an American hero. I'm a person who loves children.

Some have brains, and some haven't, and there it is.

My job is to watch the powerful. It's a simple job description, watch powerful people and make sure they don't hurt the folks.

There's a lot of dark stuff from the '80s that we don't think about.

Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don't.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

[Sometimes I] put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters.

I began reading everyhing in the family library. Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. And of course, if you're running out of books to read you can always read Shakespeare.