Gordon Parks Quotes

The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart.

All I’m saying is that perhaps we can make a revolution without violence.

There's a powerful magic about being a writer that I still marvel at.

For mass struggles, nonviolence is essential.

Many of us in Nashville accepted nonviolence as a way of life, a way of living, not simply as a technique or a tactic.

Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.

Artists have the unique ability to tell stories. It's not charts and graphs that get people to change.

I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak - nothing passive - nothing naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

Some people's photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that's fine. But that's not why I do them. I'm a gun for hire.

A song is not going to change this damn world. Instead of making people mad about this shitty situation, it's going to make everybody happy. It's a false thing. It's like a lullaby as opposed to a gun. People need to be slapped into reality and music just doesn't do that.

The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.

The camera can be a machine gun, a warm kiss, a sketchbook. Shooting a camera is like saying, Yes, yes, yes. There is no maybe. All the maybes should go in the trash.

I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.

I started photography more or less by accident when I was already 27. I was taken on as an assistant by a photographer who was a friend of a friend and I very quickly understood the potential of expression in photography.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

His peaceful resistance shook the foundations of an empire, exposed the emptiness of a repressive ideology, and proved that moral leadership is more powerful than any weapon.

Photography can still be used to champion activism and change. I believe this, even while standing in the cool winds of postmodernism... Postmodernism looked radical, but it wasn't. As a movement it was profoundly liberal and became a victim of itself. Precisely at this historical moment, when multicultural democracy is the order of the day, photography can be used as a powerful weapon toward instituting political and cultural change. I for one will continue to work toward this end.

One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live.

Non-violence is very weak in the theoretical sense; it cannot defend itself. But it is most powerful in the action situation where people are using non-violence because they want desperately to bring about some change. Non-violence in action is a very potent force and it can't be stopped. The people who are struggling have the complete say-so. No man-made law, no human ruler, no army can destroy this. There is no way it can be destroyed... And so, if we have the capacity to endure, if we have the patience, things will change.

Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.

Non-co-operation in the political field is an extension of the doctrine as it is practised in the domestic field.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.

The question is, how do you stop the power elite from doing as much damage to you as possible? That comes through movements. It's not our job to take power. You could argue that the most powerful political figure in April of 1968 was Martin Luther King. And we know Johnson was terrified of him. We have to accept that all of the true correctives to American democracy came through these movements that never achieved formal political power and yet frightened the political establishment enough to respond.

I think as I get older that's an area that I'd like to explore more. Going from being in front of the lens to behind it.