Quote #27

:[T]o whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.

More from Ralph Ellison

  1. 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, t…
  2. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.
  3. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me.
  4. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass.
  5. Play the game, but don't believe in it.
  6. When I discover who I am, I'll be free.
  7. There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human con…
  8. There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

All Ralph Ellison quotes