Quotes by John Wilkins

“There is a terrible truthfulness about photography. The ordinary academician gets hold of a pretty model, paints her as well as he can, calls her Juliet, and puts a nice verse Shakespeare underneath, and the picture is admired beyond measure. The photographer finds the same pretty girl, he dresses her up and photographs her, and calls her Juliet, but somehow it is no good – it is still Miss Wilkins, the model. It is too true to be Juliet.George Bernard ShawWilson’s Photographic Magazine, LVI, 1909””

The Photographer's Eye

“It was now pointed out that the black male child, even in a black school using white textbooks, could early come to the conclusion that all the heroes in history were white men. Furthermore, with the exception of nationally known black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and others, the black male child frequently saw the adult black male as ineffectual and defeated. The old picture of the white man leading the black man by the hand toward the solution to his problems again gave the black male child a view of the adult black male as something not worth becoming, and killed his spirit and his will to become an adult, problem-solving individual.””

Black Like Me

“As wee now wonder at the blindnesse of our Ancestors, who were not able to discerne such things as seeme plaine and obvious unto us. So will our posterity admire our ignorance in as perspicuous matters.””

The Discovery of a World in the Moone

“How strange a thing this art of writing did seem at it's first invention, we may guess by late discovered Americans, who were amazed to see men Converse with books, and could scarce make themselves to believe that a paper could speak..””

John Wilkins

John Wilkins was an English Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher, and a pivotal figure in the early scientific community, best known as one of the founders of the Royal Society. Serving as Bishop o...