Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
RALPH ELLISONIf the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.
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…and yet I am what they think I am.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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In order to travel far you have to be detached.
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Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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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?
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The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
RALPH ELLISON