Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled ‘file and forget.’
RALPH ELLISONGod is love, I said, but art’s the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.
More Ralph Ellison Quotes
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Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
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I am invisible, understand, simply because people 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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Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
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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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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.
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That … is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
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Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it.” Stephen Covey “It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
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That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.
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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.
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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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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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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.
RALPH ELLISON