Ralph Ellison > Quotes

“Could he have meant—hell, he must have meant the principle, that we were to affirm the principle on which the country was built and not the men, or at least not the men who did the violence. Did he mean say “yes” because he knew that the principle was greater than the men, greater than the numbers and the vicious power and all the methods used to corrupt its name? Did he mean to affirm the principle, which they themselves had dreamed into being out of the chaos and darkness of the feudal past, and which they had violated and compromised to the point of absurdity even in their own corrupt minds? Or did he mean that we had to take the responsibility for all of it, for the men as well as the principle, because we were the heirs who must use the principle because no other fitted our needs? Not for the power or for vindication, but because we, with the given circumstance of our origin, could only thus find transcendence? Was it that we of all, we, most of all, had to affirm the principle, the plan in whose name we had been brutalized and sacrificed—not because we would always be weak nor because we were afraid or opportunistic, but because we were older than they, in the sense of what it took to live in the world with others and because they had exhausted in us, some—not much, but some—of the human greed and smallness, yes, and the fear and superstition that had kept them running. (Oh, yes, they’re running too, running all over themselves.) Or was it, did he mean that we should affirm the principle because we, through no fault of our own, were linked to all the others in the loud, clamoring semi-visible world, that world seen only as a fertile field for exploitation by Jack and his kind, and with condescension by Norton and his, who were tired of being the mere pawns in the futile game of “making history”? Had he seen that for these too we had to say “yes” to the principle, lest they turn upon us to destroy both it and us?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might rupture myself.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Don’t come early in the morning Neither in the heat of the day But come in the sweet cool of the Evening and wash my sins away”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“And let's remember that science isn't a game of chess, although chess may be played scientifically. The other thing to remember is that if we are to organize the masses we must first organize ourselves.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are. That must be it, I thought—to lose your direction is to lose your face.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“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? What a waste, what a senseless waste! But what of those things which you actually didn’t like, not because you were not supposed to like them, not because to dislike them was considered a mark of refinement and education—but because you actually found them distasteful? The very idea annoyed me. How could you know? It involved a problem of choice. I would have to weigh many things carefully before deciding and there would be some things that would cause quite a bit of trouble, simply because I had never formed a personal attitude toward so much. I had accepted the accepted attitudes and it had made life seem simple … But”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“All boundaries down, freedom was not only the recognition of necessity, it was the recognition of possibility.”
― Ralph Ellison

“For their most innocent words were acts of violence to which we of the campus were hypersensitive though we endured them not.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Gin, jazz and dreams were not enough.”
― Ralph Ellison

“They were very much the same, each attempting to force his picture of reality upon me and neither giving a hoot in hell for how things looked to me.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“I had no doubt that I could do something, but what, and how? I had no contacts and I believed in nothing. And the obsession with my identity which I had developed in the factory hospital returned with a vengeance. Who was I, how had I come to be?”
― Ralph Ellison

“Do they come to bury the others or to be entombed to give life or to receive it?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“But on the other hand, it would be a great mistake to assume that the dead are absolutely powerless.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy”
― Ralph Ellison Invisible Man

“Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He tell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and birds and trees, or your face if you'd looked into its dulling mirror -- and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all. They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after awhile, became dull then dusty, then dried.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Literature is integrated, and I'm not just talking about color or race. I'm talking about the power of literature to make us recognize - and again and again - the wholeness of the human experience.”
― Ralph Ellison

“And in order for the Negro to fulfill his duty as a citizen it was often necessary that he fight for his self-affirmed right to fight.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Ah," I can hear you say, "so it was all a build-up to bore us with his buggy jiving. He only wanted us to listen to him rave!" But only partially true: Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me:
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Now you're free of illusions,' Jack said, pointing to my seed wasting upon the air. 'How does it feel to be free of one's illusions?'

And now I answered, 'Painful and empty... But look... there's your universe, and that drip-drop upon the water you hear is all the history you've made, all you're going to make”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“I was to be a justifier, my task would be to deny the unpredictable human element of all Harlem so that they could ignore it when it in any way interfered with their plans.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Running from the birds to what, I didn't know. I ran. Why was I here at all? I ran through the night, ran within myself. Ran.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.”
― Ralph Ellison in Juneteenth

“...she was something more- a force, a stable, familiar force like something out of my past which kept me from whirling off into some unknown which I dared not face. It was a most painful position for at the same time Mary reminded me constantly that something was expected of me, some act of leadership, some newsworthy achievement;...”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Boy on a Train From”
― Ralph Ellison, Flying Home and Other Stories

“Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Even the church has to have its outhouse, just as it has to have a front door as well as a back door, a basement as well as a steeple. Because man is always going to be man....”
― Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth

“Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled “file and forget,” and I can neither file nor forget.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“And all Negroes at some period of their lives there is that yearning for a sense of group unity that is the yearning of men for a flag: for a unity that cannot be compromised, that cannot be bought; that is conscious of itself, of its strength, that is militant.”
― Ralph Ellison

“So now they're shaking in their boots and looking for someone to give them the answer they want to hear. Not the truth, but some lie that will protect them from the truth”
― Ralph Ellision