I'm not a nice girl; I'm a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods )

I didn't decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.

Photography helps people to see.

I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I'll be there until the last minute, fighting.

Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times - the pulse of today.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.

I hope you will excuse my being late. The person in this organization who gave me directions here has obviously heard me speak before.

You are never as smart as you look when you win and you are never as dumb as you look as you lose.

Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.

To have never done anything but make the eighteenth part of a pin, is a sorry account for a human being to give of his existence.

...when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.

The consolation of art comes in many forms... For some it is making, for others it is having.

The rich buy assets. The poor only have expenses. The middle class buys liabilities they think are assets. The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.

Death deserves dignity.

I was very nervous about going up to teach at Stanford and very nervous even about going to ARPA.

The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.