Quotes about camera
page 2

Paul Theroux photo

“The trouble with cameras is that people see them a mile away.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Picture Palace (1978)

Lisa Kudrow photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Sienna Guillory photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The “natural magic” of the camera obscura anticipated Hollywood in turning the spectacle of the external world into a consumer commodity or package.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 146

Sinclair Lewis photo
Bill O'Reilly photo

“I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this… What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2004-02-10

Good Morning America

ABC

Television

in response to a request to make good on his 2003-03-18 promise to publicly apologize if weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq

Harold Macmillan photo

“So there you are – you can see what it is like. The camera's hot, probing eye, these monstrous machines and their attendants – a kind of twentieth century torture chamber, that's what it is. But I must try to forget about that, and imagine that you are sitting here in the room with me.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

"Call for 'A little extra effort'", The Times, 25 January 1962, p. 6.

Opening to Conservative Party political broadcast (24 January 1962), quoted in "Call for 'A little extra effort'", The Times (25 January 1962), p. 6 Macmillan decided to open by showing the television outside broadcast crew who had set up their equipment.

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Harold Macmillan / Quotes / Prime Minister
1960s

John DiMaggio photo
Ralph Ellison photo
Heidi Klum photo
Daniel Radcliffe photo

“Stage is much more intimidating than going before the cameras, because you can really screw up, and can't do a retake.”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

http://www.flixster.com/actor/daniel-radcliffe/daniel-radcliffe-quotes

Joseph Gordon-Levitt photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.”

Die Erinnerung wirkt wie das Sammlungsglas in der Camera obscura: Sie zieht alles zusammen und bringt dadurch ein viel schöneres Bild hervor, als sein Original ist.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Charles Krauthammer photo
Jimmy Kimmel photo
Andy Partridge photo
Dorothea Lange photo

“One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.”

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) American photojournalist

As quoted in Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life by Elizabeth Partridge (1994)

Philippe Kahn photo

“Camera-Phones are at the root of the Citizen-Journalism revolution.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

NPR Interview January 2007, regarding the use of camera phones in citizen-journalism http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/01/06/father_of_the_camera.html.

Gaurav Sharma (author) photo
Lindsay Lohan photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
Johannes Grenzfurthner photo
Laraine Day photo
Oksana Shachko photo
Vilém Flusser photo
Morgan Tsvangirai photo
Peter Greenaway photo

“How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't. There's a hierarchy. Why do I pick out that thing, that thing, that thing?”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Mark Feeney, "David Hockney keeps seeking new avenues of exploration," Boston Globe (26 February 2006)
2000s

Julia Gillard photo
Isa Genzken photo
Harry Dean Stanton photo

“I play myself all the time… on camera and off. What else can I do?”

Harry Dean Stanton (1926–2017) American actor, musician, and singer

HBO: Big Love - Interviews - Harry Dean Stanton http://www.hbo.com/biglove/interviews/harry_dean_stanton.html

Craig Ferguson photo

“[to camera] Excuse me for just a second. [walks off-camera, to studio audience] Shut up!”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

2009-05-15 broadcast
The audience had collectively went "Aw…", expressing disappointment.
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

Zephyr Teachout photo

“On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg was in the hot seat. Cameras surrounded him. The energy in the room – and on Twitter – was electric. At last, the reluctant CEO is made to answer some questions! Except it failed. It was designed to fail. It was a show designed to get Zuckerberg off the hook after only a few hours in Washington DC. It was a show that gave the pretense of a hearing without a real hearing. It was designed to deflect and confuse. … The worst moments of the hearing for us, as citizens, were when senators asked if Zuckerberg would support legislation that would regulate Facebook. I don’t care whether Zuckerberg supports Honest Ads or privacy laws or GDPR. By asking him if he would support legislation, the senators elevated him to a kind of co-equal philosopher king whose view on Facebook regulation carried special weight. It shouldn’t. Facebook is a known behemoth corporate monopoly. It has exposed at least 87 million people’s data, enabled foreign propaganda and perpetuated discrimination. We shouldn’t be begging for Facebook’s endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg’s promises of self-regulation. We should treat him as a danger to democracy and demand our senators get a real hearing.”

Zephyr Teachout (1971) American academic, political activist and candidate

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/mark-zuckerbergs-facebook-hearing-sham?CMP=fb_gu (11 April 2018), The Guardian.

Adi Da Samraj photo
Andrei Codrescu photo
Philippe Kahn photo

“Just like a picture is worth 1000 words, a camera phone is worth 1000 cell phones!”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

Speech at the firt Future Imaging conference in Monterrey, California.

Norodom Sihanouk photo

“I don't want to become a kind of Hirohito who produces cameras, or an Elizabeth of England who cares only for horses. Even less do I want to turn out like Juan Carlos, who's just a ghost of Franco. I have no personal ambitions.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 103.
Interviews

Bill Fagerbakke photo

“… [Y]our observer's camera is clicking steadily. It's beautiful up above the sunlit clouds. The smooth drone of your twin motors makes you happy. You feel like singing and then you do. Then out of the corner of your eye, you see four black dots, growing larger momentarily. It's an enemy patrol of German Messerschmitts. Your gunner has seen them too. You hear the rattle of the machine gun as you put your bomber in a fast climbing turn, but the Messerschmitt fighters climb faster. They form under your tail, two on each side. One by one, they attack. A yellow light flashes in front of you. The first fighter slips away while the next comes on at you. Again that smashing yellow flame. Your observer falls over unconscious. Before you can think, the next Messerschmitt is upon you. A terrific jolt. Your port engine belches smoke. It's been hit…. You force-land on the first Allied airfield. That night, seated next to a hospital bed where your observer nurses a scalp wound, you hear an enemy communique. A British bomber was shot down over the lines today. Well, you puff a cigarette and grin.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Woo, Elaine. " Larry LeSueur/'Murrow Boy' former war correspondant http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/local/me-lesueur7", (obituary), Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2003, accessed June 21, 2011. As quoted by Stanley W. Cloud and Lynne Olson in The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, ISBN 0395877539. LeSueur just "after interviewing a young British pilot who had just flown a reconnaissance mission over Germany.

Madeleine Stowe photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“When I finished the series, I wasn't going to do television again. I never wanted to do television to begin with, and I was so exhausted by the process that I was wary of being in front of the camera again.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On finishing her work in the series The X-Files — reported in Steve Hedgpeth (January 22, 2006) "Gillian Anderson : TV or not TV", The Star-Ledger, p. 3.
2000s

Jay Leiderman photo
Cloris Leachman photo
Mel Gibson photo
Wisława Szymborska photo
James Comey photo
Kenneth Goldsmith photo
Dhani Harrison photo

“That’s a nice little flip camera you got there? They’re good those.”

Dhani Harrison (1978) English musician

Dhani Harrison " Dhani Harrison 3/31/09 Los Angeles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-nsECK3Dl8" at Youtube.com, 3 April, 2009: at a Amoeba Records in Los Angeles.

Charles Stross photo
Aaliyah photo
Edward Snowden photo

“The types of collection in the book -– microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us –- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html 2013 Christmas Message

26 December 2013

Terrell Owens photo

“He's definitely a character. But he's his own marketing tool, and he does it very well. He's real laid-back and subdued most times. Real down-to-earth guy. And when it's lights-camera-action -- different person.”

Terrell Owens (1973) former American football wide receiver

Dorsey Levens — reported in Jason Wilde (December 3, 2004) "A Perfect Fit - Shedding His Label As A Malcontent, Terrell Owens Has Transformed The Eagles With His NFL-Best 13 Receiving Tds - And Form-Fitting Tights", Wisconsin State Journal, p. D1.
About

Patrick Modiano photo

“Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning. The camera brings them to our eyes, but does not settle them in our minds, nor in time.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Jorge Luis Borges: Medallions", p. 178
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

Damian Pettigrew photo
Charlie Beck photo

“In a couple of decades … every public safety employee, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, everybody will have them. I think it improves behavior on both sides of the camera, which is our goal.”

Charlie Beck (1953) Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department

On usefulness of body cameras for police officers — quoted in: [December 5, 2014, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/police-departments-buying-body-cams-officers-recording/story?id=27003287&singlePage=true, Police Departments Are Buying Body Cams, and Officers Don't Have to Tell You When They're Recording, December 18, 2014, ABC News, David Wright, Victoria Thompson, Lauren Effron]

Stephen Fry photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Pricasso photo

“What had sounded like a great idea in the newsroom, ended up being the longest and most embarrassing moment of my life. Cameras clicked away and Pricasso kept rubbing his bum with colours of purple, pink and orange against my likeness.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[The Star staff, Pricasso's the name, painting the game, 28 September 2012, 3, The Star, South Africa, Independent Online]
About

Philippe Kahn photo

“Camera-phones are like nuclear power plants: bad people will turn them into evil, good people will put them to good use.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

NPR Interview January 2007, regarding current uses of the camera phone http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/01/06/father_of_the_camera.html.

“Click. The spare camera was now focussed and working. The lead mare—Barb Nose's—saw the drop. She cut her stride and wheeled and ran along the dangerous edge. Barb Nose ran in the vanguard, protecting the rear, driving the foals ahead of him. Blaze Face had long since cut and run, taking his beaten stallion flesh off to be nursed, to wait for another day, another elder to challenge. The other mares expertly and instinctively followed the leader as she rimmed the mesa, heading for the foothills of the El Gatos. One foal, too, made the cut, on stick-like legs, frightened but blindly following. The second foal had truly been blinded by panic. He strode to the drop-off and never stopped. He was a wild horse, and he had to run, and now he would run free forever. Plunging headlong over the drop, body whirling, his legs still flailing, as he fell through the desert air and past the serrated rock walls of the mesa, he knew nothing of time. He knew nothing of the eons that had gone before him, building this mesa of bluff and sandstone and archean rock. He fell through layers of time, to timelessness, a living thing for so little time. Once a living work of art, now a broken artifact. One foal. Dead. Murdered by man. Murdered by time. The drumbeat of the earth was lessened by one horse's tiny hooves. And all of us were lessened by this new silence. Click.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From Running Wild, pp. 14-15
Other Topics

“I often wished during those years that I could be a lyricist with a camera. […] I took great delight in [Edward Weston's] and many other photographers’ work. I envied them the freedom to photograph a landscape apparently without concern for the implications of its possession.”

David Goldblatt (1930–2018) South African photographer

In an interview with Okwui Enwezor, as quoted in "The Camera Is Not a Machine Gun" http://designobserver.com/article.php?id=10557, Fred Ritchin, 1998

William S. Burroughs photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The TV camera has no shutter. It does not deal with aspects or facets of objects in high resolution. It is a means of direct pick-up by the electrical groping over surfaces.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 242
1960s

Billy Wilder photo

“Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.”

Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American filmmaker

As quoted in The New Hollywood : American Movies in the '70s (1975) by Axel Madsen

Jeremy Clarkson photo
Jean-Luc Godard photo

“[I think] the movie is not a thing which is taken by the camera; the movie is the reality of the movie moving from reality to the camera.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

from Los Angeles Free Press, March 22, 1968. Gene Youngblood

Rick Santorum photo

“You're not gonna use the pink ball. We're not gonna let you do that. Not on camera. Friends don't let friends use pink balls.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

2012-03-29
Santorum: ‘Friends don't let friends use pink balls’
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/03/29/454470/santorum-friends-dont-let-friends-use-pink-balls/
2012-04-15
to a boy using a pink bowling ball, at a campaign stop in Wisconsin

Jack Johnson (musician) photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Reporter: Would a reasonable observer say that you are potentially vulnerable to blackmail by Russia or by its intelligence agencies?
Trump: Lemme just tell you what I do. When I leave our country, I’m a very high-profile person, would you say? I am extremely careful. I’m surrounded by bodyguards. I’m surrounded by people. And I always tell them — anywhere, but I always tell them if I’m leaving this country, “Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go, you’re gonna probably have cameras.” I’m not referring just to Russia, but I would certainly put them in that category. And number one, “I hope you’re gonna be good anyway. But in those rooms, you have cameras in the strangest places. Cameras that are so small with modern technology, you can’t see them and you won’t know. You better be careful, or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.” I tell this to people all the time. I was in Russia years ago, with the Miss Universe contest, which did very well — Moscow, the Moscow area did very, very well. And I told many people, “Be careful, because you don’t wanna see yourself on television. Cameras all over the place.”
And again, not just Russia, all over. Does anyone really believe that story? I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump Press Conference at Trump Tower https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/us/politics/trump-press-conference-transcript.html,Donald (11 January 2017)
2010s, 2017, January

Richard Stallman photo
Neil Peart photo

“I feel the sense of possibilities
I feel the wrench of hard realities
The focus is sharp in the city
-- The Camera Eye (1981)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Harvey Milk photo
Saul Leiter photo
Thom Yorke photo
Lil Wayne photo

“I got a scope on the barrel thats a hammer with a camera”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Bottles and Rockin J's Game Featuring DJ Khaled, Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross, Fabolous, Lil Wayne, and Teyana Taylor
Official Mix tapes, Guest appearances

Paul Simon photo

“Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces,
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy,
I said, 'Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

America
Song lyrics, Bookends (1968)

Susan Sontag photo
Vyjayanthimala photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“I agree that it's very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what's moral and what is not. We are on our own, without a god, and we have to get together, sit down together and decide what kind of society do we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where people steal, where people kill, where people don't pull their weight paying their taxes, doing that kind of thing? Do we want to live in a kind of society where everybody is out for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world? And we decide in conclave together that that's not the kind of world in which we want to live. It's difficult. There is no absolute reason why we should believe that that's true - it's a moral decision which we take as individuals - and we take it collectively as a collection of individuals. If you want to get that sort of value system from religion I want you to ask yourself - whereabouts in religion do you get it? Which religion do you get it from? They're all different. If you get it from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition then I beg you - don't get it from your holy book! Because the morality you will get from reading your holy book is hideous. Don't get it from your holy book. Don't get it from sucking up to your god. Don't get it from saying “oh, I'm terrified of going to hell so I'd better be good” - that's a very ignoble reason to be good. Instead - be good for good reasons. Be good for the reason that's you've decided together with other people the society we want to live in: a decent humane society. Not one based on absolutism, not one based on holy books and not one based on sucking up to.. looking over your shoulder to the divine spy camera in the sky.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ&t=59m29s
Richard Dawkins vs. Jonathan Sacks - BBC's RE:Think Festival (2012)

Marc Maron photo
Richard Burton photo
Susan Sontag photo
Richard Sherman (American football) photo