Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.
RALPH ELLISONI 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.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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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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There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
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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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My hole is warm and full of light.
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To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
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It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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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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Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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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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If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.
RALPH ELLISON