Mary Ellen Mark Quotes

My target audience is anyone who finds the world interesting and human behavior fascinating, terrible, inspiring, funny, and occasionally, mysterious.

I get mail from people all over the world now from people who tell me that they didn't really understand Down syndrome, but because of me they have read about it and studied it and now they know a lot more about it.

There's so much importance in honoring your everyday hero. It doesn't take money. It doesn't take connections. What matters is that people get involved. Whether your passion is gun control or food or whatever it may be, everybody needs to stop being so self-absorbed.

What I would say to the young men and women who are beset by hopelessness and doubt is that they should go and see what is being done on the ground to fight poverty, not like going to the zoo but to take action, to open their hearts and their consciences.

Al Jazeera should understand the societies, should understand the culture of the civilisation, should understand the dynamics of the societies, should be part of this understanding; and on the other level, Al Jazeera should concentrate on the margin rather than the centre. It means that Al Jazeera should be close to the public.

I want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can.

Government alone cannot solve the problems we deal with in our correctional facilities, treatment centers, homeless shelters and crisis centers - we need our faith-based and community partners.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

I tend to focus on young people and on giving a voice to groups of people who don't normally get their voices heard.

I'm just incredibly interested in people.

I'm one of those people that thinks the world changes in smaller and in more mysterious ways than a lot of people like to think. A lot of traditional charities and organizations do things that on the surface seem like a good idea, but it doesn't change the way that people think about interacting with other people.

At any rate, your contempt for your fellow human beings does not prevent you ... from trying to win their respect.

It is my responsibility that I must make demonstrative efforts to reach out to every citizen of the country.

When you travel and when you campaign, people tell you their problems. You see the problems and you become aware of them and you talk about them every day. And so you feel the responsibility for doing something about them.

I've been able to meet a lot of vets at different functions and events, and it just hit me that I should step it up a notch, and I have a lot of peers who feel the same way.

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.

Listening to an underserved population is how you begin to understand them and serve them better.

We want to let people know that we can build solidarity with suffering folks so that they are not excluded, they are integrated.

My priority has always been listening and understanding the voices of those I represent, and I work every day to address the concerns people have for their families.

I think the truth is most people don't want to hear about policy. They want to hear, 'I understand what you're going through, and you can trust me to fight for you and what you care about.' But we can do both - fight for policy and resonate with people at the same time.

It's important to reach out to people who are marginalized.

The condition of truth, is to allow suffering to speak. Which means attend to suffering of the least of these, of the orphan, the widow, the poor, the working people, the gay brother, the lesbian sister, the transgender, the black people.

If I could do anything about the way people behave towards each other, I would, but since I can't, I'll stick to animals.

If we're going to fight a disease, let's fight one of the most terrible diseases of all, indifference.

I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.