Enthusiasm is the electricity of life

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.

I simply decided once and for all to liberate myself from the anxiety of notoriety and the urge to be a part of that circle of successful people, those who believe they have won who-knows-what

The best lie was always just short of the truth.

Shopping in the right kind of stores and looking for healthier foods can be a wonderful adventure to health.

The task of the teacher of the Bible is to open up what’s closed, to make plain what is obscure, to unravel what is knotted and to unfold what is tightly packed.

It's really hard to separate fantasy from reality.

Holy Writ was intended to teach men how to go to Heaven not how the heavens go.

You can change your fate. You can sit back, or you can go after your life and all that you want it to be.

That series of inventions by which man from age to age has remade his environment is a different kind of evolution -- not biological, but cultural evolution . . . "The Ascent of Man.

I love that you work out relationships with people as you're filming just to get something real to play on screen.

When you see a guy flying into the air on fire, that's not me, obviously. I do all the water tricks, though.