And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
RALPH ELLISONThat 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.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
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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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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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God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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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.
RALPH ELLISON -
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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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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Life is as the sea, art a ship in which man conquers life’s crushing formlessness, reducing it to a course, a series of swells, tides and wind currents inscribed on a chart.
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I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible, I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. And I defend because in spite of it all, I find that I love.
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Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are.
RALPH ELLISON