Quote #13
If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.
More from Ralph Ellison
- I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.
- Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
- Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
- Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When …
- Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.
- 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…
- Education is all a matter of building bridges.
- The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.