Gordon Parks

“My mother had freed me from the curse of hatred.”

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

“But I was determined to break the yoke of poverty and the segregation that went with it.”

“I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs.”

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

“I've known both misery and happiness, lived in so many different skins it is impossible for one skin to claim me.”

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

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

“I had a great sense of curiosity and a great sense of just wanting to achieve.”

“What the eye sees is its own particular truth, but what the heart feels is a universal truth.”

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

“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.”

“Your weapon is your camera.”

“You know, the camera is not a stupid machine. It has a power, and it has a responsibility.”

“Freedom was a word I had pondered whatever the stages of my life.”

“I was born with a need to express myself.”

“I would have been a lot more nervous if I had known that I was the first black director of a major Hollywood film.”

“I feel it is the heart, not the eye, that should determine the content of the photograph.”