It's easier to teach a poet how to read a balance sheet than it is to teach an accountant how to write.

I became a journalist to come as close as possible to the heart of the world.

There are men who can write poetry, and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write.

To see life. To see the world. To watch the faces of the poor, and the gestures of the proud. To see strange things. Machines, armies, multitudes, and shadows in the jungle. To see, and to take pleasure in seeing. To see and be instructed. To see and be amazed. (Describing the powers of photography; written for the launch of LIFE Magazine, 1936.)

Time should make enemies and Life should make friends.

Not much longer shall we have time for reading lessons of the past. An inexorable present calls us to the defense of a great future.

I am all for titillating trivialities. I am all for the epic touch. I could almost say that everything in Time, should be either titillating or epic or starkly, supercurtly factual.