…and yet I am what they think I am.
RALPH ELLISONThe thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
RALPH ELLISON -
Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.
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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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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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I am nobody but myself.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
RALPH ELLISON -
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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America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
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All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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Everywhere I’ve turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?
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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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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.
RALPH ELLISON