Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.
RALPH ELLISONI am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
-
-
I’m not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That’s how you make the new — by putting something else with what you’ve got. And I’m unashamedly an American integrationist.
RALPH ELLISON -
Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
RALPH ELLISON -
It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
RALPH ELLISON -
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
RALPH ELLISON -
Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
RALPH ELLISON -
In order to travel far you have to be detached.
RALPH ELLISON -
That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
RALPH ELLISON -
The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
RALPH ELLISON -
What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?
RALPH ELLISON -
…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISON -
You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.
RALPH ELLISON -
Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
RALPH ELLISON -
I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
RALPH ELLISON -
Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
RALPH ELLISON -
And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
RALPH ELLISON