Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
RALPH ELLISONSome people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
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Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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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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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
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In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.
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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
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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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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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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