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I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.

Ralph Ellison

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Ralph Ellison
Age: 80 †
Born: 1914
Born: March 1
Died: 1994
Died: April 16
Autobiographer
Critic
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Music Critic
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma
Ralph Waldo Ellison
Triggers
Cop
Guns
Poets
Gun
Carry
Poet
Cops

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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
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When I discover who I am, I'll be free.
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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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When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
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We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.
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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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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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I'm not a separatist. The imagination is integrative. That's how you make the new -- by putting something else with what you've got. And I'm unashamedly an American integrationist.
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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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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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And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.
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Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.
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I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unloveable in it, for it is all part of me.
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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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