When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
RALPH ELLISONI do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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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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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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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I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?
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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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Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it.” Stephen Covey “It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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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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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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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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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
RALPH ELLISON






