…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISONI was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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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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I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me.
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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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The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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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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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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We don’t all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.
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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
RALPH ELLISON