Mathew Brady

“I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went.”

“From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers.”

“The camera is the eye of history.”

“No one will ever know what it cost me to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. But I have them and I can look upon them with satisfaction.”

“No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. But I have to be satisfied with the consciousness of having done my duty.”

“I have done the world a service which I am sure will be appreciated more and more as time goes on.”

“The camera is the eye of history.”

“From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers.”

“My greatest aim has been to advance the art of photography and to make it what I think I have, a great and truthful medium of history.”

“My greatest regret is that I have not been able to photograph the soul of a man.”