Jacob August Riis quotes:

Men have a trick of coming up to what is expected of them, good or bad.

This will remain so after Hurricane Katrina disappears from the front pages of our newspapers. Long ago. it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. '... It did not know because it did not care... until some flagrant outrage on decency and the health of the community aroused it to noisy but ephemeral indignation.

Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate, of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat.

The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.

The slum is the measure of civilization.

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

I do not want [photography] explained to me in terms of... formulas, learned, but so hopelessly unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on a pin and put in a glass case. I want to see the sunlight on its wings as it flits from flower to flower and I don't care a rap what its Latin name may be.

Some defeats are only installments to victory.