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.

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

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

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

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.

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.