Robert Frank Quotes

As morally troubling and politically charged as the issue of inequality has become, it's not likely to cause a populist revolt. Most Americans still have a generally positive view of the wealthy and, rightly or wrongly, believe they too can make it to Richistan someday. ~ Robert Frank

It's pretty amazing to see a guy, while steering at the wheel, suddenly raise his little 300 dollar German camera with one hand and snap something that's on the move in front of him, and through an unwashed windshield at that. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958) ~ Jack Kerouac

Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy-the tone range isn't right and things like that-but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention. ~ Elliott Erwitt

I'm a huge, huge fan of photography. I have a small photography collection. As soon as I started to make some money, I bought my very first photograph: an Henri Cartier-Bresson. Then I bought a Robert Frank. ~ Annie Leibovitz

How I wished I'd have had a camera of my own, a mad mental camera that could register pictorial shots, of the photographic artist himself prowling about for his ultimate shot - an epic in itself. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958) ~ Jack Kerouac

When I was working with Robert Frank, he told me that there was absolutely no relationship between cinema and photography. I challenge that. Surely what you know as a photographer must impact how you set up your shots. ~ Ralph Gibson

I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. ~ Robert Frank

I always say that I don't want to be sentimental, that the photographs shouldn't be sentimental, and yet, I am conscious of my sentimentality. ~ Robert Frank

Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me. ~ Amy Tan

Whether you are Minor White or Robert Frank, almost every photograph starts with an act of pure description - a window. But every now and then you catch a glimpse of the photographer's reflection. The mirror is just another function of the window. ~ Alec Soth

I am always looking outside, trying to say something that is true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except what's out there. And what's out there is constantly changing. ~ Robert Frank

There are too many images, too many cameras now. We're all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It's just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn't an art anymore. Maybe it never was ~ Robert Frank

When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice. ~ Robert Frank

It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph. ~ Robert Frank

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour. ~ Annie Leibovitz

In an era when museum curators were busy introducing the public to photographs of daily life taken by Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Diane Arbus, why did they simultaneously disdain paintings depicting the same kind of people? ~ Burton Silverman

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. ~ Robert Frank

A building is not just a place to be but a way to be. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Method involves a slavish addiction to laws, and we can only aspire to anarchy. ~ Robert Pinsky

Indulgence is a legitimate life goal, but it is only one of four life goals. No life is completely lived unless each of these goals is achieved. They are:
Dharma, the goal of fulfilling the duties assigned to us by our positions in society;
Artha, the goal of accumulating possessions in the course of fulfilling our duties;
Kama, the goal of satisfying legitimate desires with the assistance of one's accumulated possessions; and
Moksha, the goal of realizing that there is more to life than duty, possessions and desires. ~ Robert E. Svoboda

Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power. ~ Robert Greene

And when this grand canvas, our life, is finished, may the world in some small or large way be a better place. ~ Robert Regis Dvorak

At the beginning of each lecture I say, 'Here's a set of events unexplainable by common sense, and I promise you'll be able to solve this mystery at the end of class.' ~ Robert Cialdini

When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin? ~ Robert Browning

I am completely an elitist in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it's an expert gardener at work or a good carpenter chopping dovetails. I don't think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one, unless the latter is a friend or a relative. Consequently, most of the human race doesn't matter much to me, outside the normal and necessary frame of courtesy and the obligation to respect human rights. I see no reason to squirm around apologizing for this. I am, after all, a cultural critic, and my main job is to distinguish the good from the second-rate, pretentious, sentimental, and boring stuff that saturates culture today, more (perhaps) than it ever has. I hate populist [shit], no matter how much the demos love it. ~ Robert Hughes

Too often we develop a blindness for all of the wonderful things in life. ~ Robert A. Giacalone

Political scientists after World War II hypothesized that even though the voices of individual Americans counted for little, most people belonged to a variety of interest groups and membership organizations - clubs, associations, political parties, unions - to which politicians were responsive. ~ Robert Reich

I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters. ~ Robert Harris

You must be the mirror, training your mind to try to see yourself as others see you. ~ Robert Greene

You only go to the darkness, when you are weak. ~ Robert Black

We're the richest economy in the history of the world. For the majority of Americans not to get the benefits of this extraordinarily prosperous economy, there's something fundamentally wrong. ~ Robert Reich

When you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go ~ Frank O'Hara

Act with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future. ~ Robert E.Lee

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living. ~ Robert Henri

So," said Ruth, "how bad is it?" "You haven't read it?" "Not all of it." "Well," I said, politely, "it needs some work." "How much?" The words "Hiroshima" and "nineteen forty-five" floated briefly into my mind. "It's fixable," I said, which I suppose it was: even Hiroshima was fixed eventually. ~ Robert Harris

How I say it has as much of an impact on what people think of me as what I say. ~ Frank Luntz

The generations that were exposed to sitcom have the people actually saying the line, saying the joke, whereas sort of before that, you have much more observational humor. ~ Robert Mankoff

In which case, he was basically saying: 'Look, if there is part of you that isn't under your control and therefore makes you suffer, then do yourself a favor and quit identifying with it. ~ Robert Wright

I'm such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don't know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good.

I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too Goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise and their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down!

I despise modern music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck up to it.

I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body. The thought of my internal functions, the organs, digestion, the brain, the nervous system, horrify me.

Nature is horrible. It's not cute and loveable. It's kill or be killed. It's very ~ Robert Crumb

If ye love me keep my commandments ~ Robert D. Hales

Promoting a stock is like making a movie. You've got to have stars, props, and a good script. ~ Robert Friedland

I can speak these words and perhaps you can see these things clearly because you are using your imagination. But I cannot imagine these things because I lived them, and to remember them with the vividness I know they should have is impossible. They are lost to me. ~ Robert Olen Butler

Good!" the creature echoed. "Doctor Nelson will be along in a minute. Feel like some breakfast?" All four symbols in the query were in Smith's vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard them rightly. He knew that he was food, but he did not "feel like" food. Nor had he had any warning that he might be selected for such an honor. He had not known that the food supply was such that it was necessary to reduce the corporate group. He was filled with mild regret, since there was still so much to grok of these new events, but no reluctance. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

The mathematical economists have commonly been mathematicians first and economists afterward, disposed to oversimplify the data and underestimate the divergence between their premises and facts of life. ~ Frank H. Knight

Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I felt I was painting with a Popsicle. ~ Robert Merrill

Great defeats enable us to learn and to accomplish greater feats. ~ Robert J. Braathe

Given his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan, I think I myself, our commanders, and our troops had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him. ...I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission." Pg. 299 ~ Robert M. Gates

One of the greatest weaknesses of Chris Mitchell's editorship of the Australian is that he has allowed Greg Sheridan to remain his foreign editor throughout. Sheridan is a man who argued in different columns that George W. Bush was the Winston Churchill of our era; that unlike mediocre politicians like Barack Obama and John McCain, the "new star" of American politics, Sarah Palin, was able to combine "celebrity" with "character"; that President Obama's "anti-Israel hysteria" was leading his administration toward "licensing a mutant strain of anti-semitism"; and that the United States would most likely be strengthened by the crash of Wall Street in September 2008. ~ Robert Manne

If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I like Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for instance, because the authors of those three surrealistic novels - Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon and Robert Pirsig - invented their own rules, knowing that the old ones wouldn't do the job they had in mind. ~ William Zinsser

Saudi Arabia is the most fragile of all Arab states, though we're not saying so. And, unfortunately, bin Laden puts his finger on the other longstanding injustices in the Arab world: the continued occupation of Palestinian land by the Israelis; the enormous, constant Arab anger with the tens of thousands of Iraqi children who are dying under sanctions; the feelings of humiliation of millions of Arabs living under petty dictators, almost all of whom are propped up by the West. ~ Robert Fisk

The focus of entertainment is taking away from what the public needs as news. I think investigative journalism will always be important and always find its way, be it on the Internet or wherever. ~ Robert Redford

I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn't want to be a journalist - I wanted to be a historian. ~ Robert Darnton

It was one of those plays in which all of the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly. ~ Robert Benchley

My balls feel like a pair of maracas. ~ Frank Zappa

The greatest truth must be recognition that in every man, in every child is the potential for greatness. ~ Robert Kennedy

The test of a man isn't what you think he'll do. It's what he actually does. ~ Frank Herbert

These words: migrant birds, arriving from distant places with story and metaphor caught in their feathers; ~ Robert Macfarlane

We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
since days of long ago. ~ Robert Burns

You don't have to go fishing, of course, to fix your motorcycle. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms. ~ Robert Reich

Apart from the fact that any hardy exercise conduces much to the training and formation of a soldier, pig-sticking tends to give a man what is called a 'stalker's eye,' but which, par excellence, is the soldier's eye. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

I'm my own worst critic. I mean, I know what's wrong with everything that I've done. ~ Robert Barry

Life's a crapshoot, Sam. At least you filled the cheap seats. ~ Robert Bruce Cormack