165 Quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

In photography, the smallest thing can become a big subject, an insignificant human detail can become a leitmotiv. We see and we make seen as a witness to the world around us; the event, in its natural activity, generates an organic rhythm of forms.

I am a pack of nerves while waiting for the moment, and this feeling grows and grows and grows and then it explodes, it is a physical joy, a dance, space and time united. Yes, yes, yes, yes!

Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.

The adventurer in me felt obliged to testify with a quicker instrument than a brush to the scars of the world.

Culture shock is often felt sharply at the borders between countries, but sometimes it doesn't hit fully until you've been in a place for a long time.

Some photographs are like a Chekhov short story or a Maupassant story. They're quick things and there's a whole world in them. But one is unconscious of it while shooting.

I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.

Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone.

To take photographs is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis