So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

Fatal illness has always been viewed as a test of moral character, but in the nineteenth century there is a great reluctance to let anybody flunk the test.

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.

With more people, there are more voices to tune out.

I want to live as long as possible, just to see how stupid it gets.

Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself.

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.