I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
RALPH ELLISONWhen American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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The world is a possibility if only you’ll discover it.
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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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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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I blundered into writing.
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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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The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
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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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I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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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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God is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
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You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Sauls around on the side.
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Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.
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If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
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Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form…without light I am not only invisible but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death…the truth is the light and light is the truth.
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
RALPH ELLISON