Quote

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.

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
Humans
Humanity
Hood
Even
Understanding
Extend
Life
Knowledge
Shakespeare
Upon
Riding
Art
Willingness
Littles
Red
Little
Finally
Human
Depends
Uniformly

More quotes by Ralph Ellison

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I am nobody but myself.
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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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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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Education is all a matter of building bridges.
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It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
Ralph Ellison
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I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
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When I discover who I am, I'll be free.
Ralph Ellison
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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.
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There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.
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The world is a possibility if only you'll discover it.
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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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I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
Ralph Ellison
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Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled 'file and forget.'
Ralph Ellison
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Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
Ralph Ellison
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Having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge.
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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 Ellison
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Life is as the sea, art a ship in which man conquers life's crushing formlessness, reducing it to a course, a series of swells, tides and wind currents inscribed on a chart.
Ralph Ellison
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The thing to do is to exploit the meaning of the life you have.
Ralph Ellison
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Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.
Ralph Ellison