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"The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth."
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"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."

"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."

"He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly?"

"Even if the whole earth and sea were turned to gold, they could hardly satisfy the avarice of a woman... You can more easily scratch a diamond with your fingernail than you can by any human ingenuity get a woman to consent to giving any of her savings."

"It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth."
Explore more quotes by Edward Steichen

"Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product."

"Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man."

"When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself."

"There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is man himself. If we hadn't had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn't be here. We have survived it on our optimism."

"The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding."

"When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration."

"I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself."

"The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth."
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