America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
RALPH ELLISONTo hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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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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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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Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied
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And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.
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Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the question.
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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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My hole is warm and full of light.
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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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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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Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.
RALPH ELLISON