Quotes from Gordon Parks

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Enthusiasm is the electricity of life

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

There's another horizon out there, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know.

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

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.

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

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

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.