And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.
RALPH ELLISONPerhaps 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.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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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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Everywhere I’ve turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
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I am nobody but myself.
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I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISON