I never work with a screen. Other photographers have this black thing around, and they go back and look at it. I'd rather spend the time with the subject, photographing or discussing or talking, than staring at this thing. I'd rather look at what's going on.
I only believe in what I see and hear with my own eyes and ears.
There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.
Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.
There is nothing like first-hand evidence.
What could be any more correct for any people than to see with their own eyes?
And one eye-witness weighs More than ten hear-fays. Seeing is believing, All the world o'er.
You can't exactly do it from your hotel room. It's the weather; you've got to get out in it. You're telling people that there are 70 mile-per-hour winds. So it's like, 'Let's prove it.'
Human vision is endowed with the greatest Reality, since it comes to us directly from the contemplation of the Universe.
It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.
To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, first-hand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses.
Through my own observations. I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.
In dealing with the China problem, the British and American side, which had particularly strong interests in China, should have based its judgments about the origins of the problem on direct observation of the actual circumstances at the time.
It is one thing to read about the world, but quite another to see and hear for oneself.
I believe that the people who survive a cataclysm, rather than those who stand by and analyze it, are nearly always the more credible witnesses to their own history.
Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.
I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them.
All I know is what I am getting.
One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself.
I never make studies from nature. They would get in the way. I make use of my mind.
Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.
The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.
One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.
Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur.
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.
