Gordon Parks Quotes

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.

Many times I wondered whether my achievement was worth the loneliness I experienced, but now I realize the price was small.

I have been born again and again and each time, I have found something to love.

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.

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.

I have never known anyone important enough to consume me in anger beyond a few hours. Better to depart their existence before they poison your own.

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.

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.

Think in terms of images and words. They can be mighty powerful when they are fitted together properly.

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

I do find a certain fascination with the unpredictable. The transitory years we wade through are what they are- what we make of them.

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

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

Use anger to emotionalize whatever thing you intend to do in life - being a painter, a poet or a photographer

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

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

I have always felt as though I needed a weapon against evil.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I suffered first as a child from discrimination, poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.

Photography was my choice of weapons.

I think most people can do a whole lot more if they just try.

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.

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.