The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize ideas.
RALPH ELLISONPlease, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.
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The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.
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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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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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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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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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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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The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.
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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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Power, for the writer….lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.
RALPH ELLISON