237 Quotes by Ralph Ellison

What is wrong with this gentleman, Sylvester?’ the tall one said. ‘A man’s dying outside!’ I said. ‘Someone is always dying,’ the other one said. ‘Yes, and it’s good to die beneath God’s great tent of sky.

And yet, it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound.

I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound.

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.

As the advertising industry, which is dedicated to the creation of masks, makes clear, that which cannot gain authority from tradition may borrow it with a mask.

Something in Mama’s voice was vast and high, like a rainbow; yet something sad and deep, like when the organ played in church, was around Mama’s words.

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.

That... is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang

I am an invisible man...I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids— and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.