Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
Some of the young photographers today enter photography where I leave off. My “grandchildren” astound me. What I worked for they seem born with. So I wonder where their affirmations of Spirit will lead.
(1968) 
Clarence John Laughlin
[Photographer, b. 1905, Lake Charles, Louisiana, d. 1985, New Orleans, Louisiana.]
I attempt, through much of my work, to animate all things—even so-called “inanimate” objects—with the spirit of man. I have come, by degrees, to realize that this extremely animistic projection rises, ultimately, from my profound fear and disquiet over the accelerating mechanization of man’s life; and the resulting attempts to stamp out individuality in all spheres of man’s activity—this whole process being one of the dominant expressions of our military-industrial society. The creative photographer sets free the human contents of objects; and imparts humanity to the inhuman world around him.
Paul Delaroche
[Artist, b. 1797, Paris, d. 1856, Paris.]
The painter... will find [photography] a rapid way of making collections of studies he could otherwise obtain only with much time and trouble and, whatever his talents might be, in a far less perfect manner.
André Breton
[Artist, writer, editor, and critic, b. 1896, Tinchebray, France, d. 1966, Paris, France.]
And when will all the books that are worth anything stop being illustrated with drawings and appear only with photographs?
(1925)
Bob Richardson
[Photographer, b. 1928, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2005, New York.]
I wanted to put reality in my photographs. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what was happening. And I was going to help make it happen. Boy, they did not want that in America.
Beaumont Newhall
[Photographer, writer, and historian, b. 1908, Lynn, Massachusetts, d. 1993, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually.
Carrie Mae Weems
[Artist, b. 1953, Portland, Oregon, lives in Syracuse, New York.]
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.
Paolo Gasparini
[Photographer, b. 1934, Gorizia, Italy, lives in Caracas, Venezuela.]
I think photographs can help us learn how to look. How to think about and resist this world that’s consecrated to the grandiloquence of symbols that propagate lies and that, more and more, reduce and undervalue life.
