Man’s hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
RALPH ELLISONThe truth is the light and the light is the truth.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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I am nobody but myself.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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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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When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
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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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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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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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And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own.
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It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.
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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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I remember that I’m invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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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?
RALPH ELLISON






