Ralph Ellison Quotes

Quotes about:

• It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

  Ralph Ellison

  Commitment, Committed, Grows

  97 Copy quote

• I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.

  Ralph Ellison

  Life, Glasses, Mirrors

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.28, Vintage

  72 Copy quote

• Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

  Ralph Ellison

  Inspirational, Confidence, Power

  "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, Ch. 6, 1952.

  87 Copy quote

• Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

  Ralph Ellison

  Life, Inspiring, Failure

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.590, Vintage

  91 Copy quote

• If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then and only then will I drop my defenses and hostility, and I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.

  Ralph Ellison

  Real, Teaching, Singing

  75 Copy quote

• Education is all a matter of building bridges.

  Ralph Ellison

  Education, High School Graduation, Bridges

  Ralph Ellison (2011). “Going to the Territory”, p.66, Vintage

  89 Copy quote

• Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled 'file and forget.'

  Ralph Ellison

  Action, Forget, Possibility

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.592, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?

  Ralph Ellison

  Art, Goya, Social

  Ralph Ellison, Maryemma Graham, Amritjit Singh (1995). “Conversations with Ralph Ellison”, p.8, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  7 Copy quote

• When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

  Ralph Ellison

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.254, Vintage

  63 Copy quote

• At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.

  Ralph Ellison

  Giving, Attention, Too Much

  Ralph Ellison (2011). “The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison: Revised and Updated”, p.239, Modern Library

  66 Copy quote

• I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

  Ralph Ellison

  Grandmother, Grandparent, African American

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.40, Vintage

  57 Copy quote

• The world is a possibility if only you'll discover it.

  Ralph Ellison

  World, Possibility, Ifs

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.181, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ralph Ellison

  Fate, America, Woven

  Invisible Man epilogue (1952)

  65 Copy quote

• There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

  Ralph Ellison

  World, Dangerous

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.30, Vintage

  41 Copy quote

• What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

  Ralph Ellison

  Trying, Lost, Expected

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.277, Vintage

  48 Copy quote

• Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.

  Ralph Ellison

  Faces, Injustice, Harsh

  Ralph Ellison (2011). “Going to the Territory”, p.91, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ralph Ellison

  Men, People, Black History

  Invisible Man prologue (1952)

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ralph Ellison

  Work, Commitment, Circles

  33 Copy quote

• 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

  Ralph Ellison

  Honest, Hated, Satisfied

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.585, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• Power, for the writer....lies in his ability to reveal if only a little bit more about the complexity of humanity.

  Ralph Ellison

  Lying, Humanity, Littles

  42 Copy quote

• The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

  Ralph Ellison

  Lying, Beginnings And Ends, Ends

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.31, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ralph Ellison

  Reality, Light, Giving

  37 Copy quote

• To hell with being ashamed of what you liked.

  Ralph Ellison

  Hell, Ashamed

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.276, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. 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. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!

  Ralph Ellison

  Inspirational, Being Yourself, Men

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.40, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

  Ralph Ellison

  Speak, Knows, Frequency

  Invisible Man epilogue (1952)

  8 Copy quote

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