Gordon Parks quotes:

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 bought my first camera in Seattle, Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.

I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life

I've known both misery and happiness, lived in so many different skins it is impossible for one skin to claim me. And I have felt like a wayfarer on an alien planet at times - walking, running, wondering about what brought me to this particular place, and why. But once I was here the dreams started moving in, and I went about devouring them as they devoured me.

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.

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

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit. Enthusiasm is natural; it is being alive, taking the initiative, seeing the importance of what you do, giving it dignity and making what you do important to yourself and to others.

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

I feel it is the heart, not the eye, that should determine the content of the photograph. What the eye sees is its own. What the heart can perceive is a very different matter.

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

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

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

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

I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty. I could have just as easily picked up a knife or a gun, like many of my childhood friends did... most of whom were murdered or put in prison... but I chose not to go that way. I felt that I could somehow subdue these evils by doing something beautiful that people recognize me by, and thus make a whole different life for myself, which has proved to be so.

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

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.

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.

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

I was born to a black childhood of confusion and poverty. The memory of that beginning influences my work today, It is impossible now to photograph a hungry child without remembering the hunger of my old childhood.

If a man can reach the latter days of his life with his soul intact, he has mastered life.

If you don't have anything to say, your photographs aren't going to say much.

I've been asked if I think there will ever come a time when all people come together. I would like to think there will. All we can do is hope and dream and work toward that end. And that's what I've tried to do all my life.

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

Photography was my choice of weapons.

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.

Success can be wracking and reproachful, to you and those close to you. It can entangle you with legends that are consuming and all but impossible to live up to.

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

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

Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

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

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery. You can show things that you like about the universe, things that you hate about the universe. It's capable of doing both.