Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.

With all its technical sophistication, the photographic camera remains a coarse device compared to the human hand and brain.

Scientific knowledge advances haltingly and is stimulated by contention and doubt.

For everything is history: What was said yesterday is history, what was said a minute ago is history. But, above all, one is led to misjudge the present, because only the study of historical development permits the weighing and evaluation of the interrelationships among the components of the present-day society.

Objects are what matter. Only they carry the evidence that throughout the centuries something really happened among human beings.

[Photography] remains servile to a thoughtless vision of the world... As the term snapshot suggests, photography seizes the moment and exhibits it.