And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
RALPH ELLISONPerhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
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If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn’t care as long as they sang without dissonance.
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And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
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Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
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And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.
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That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
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Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
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Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn’t now, I couldn’t give much thought to love; in order to travel far you had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus before me.
RALPH ELLISON