Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
Ralph EllisonRead
The truth is the light and the light is the truth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Truth illuminates our understanding and guides our actions.
This quote by Ralph Ellison emphasizes the idea that truth serves as a guiding light in our lives. It suggests that understanding and living in accordance with the truth helps us navigate the complexities of life, providing clarity and direction, much like light reveals the world around us.
Themes
TruthLightUnderstandingGuidanceClarity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of honesty in leadership.
More from Ralph Ellison
All quotes βI am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
Ralph EllisonRead
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.
Ralph EllisonRead
The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.
Ralph EllisonRead
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.
Ralph EllisonRead
All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority. The universal in the novel-and isn't that what we're all clamoring for these days?-is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.
Ralph EllisonRead
Similar quotes
In the depth of the anxiety of having to die is the anxiety of being eternally forgotten.
Paul TillichRead
I wonder if people who asked for God to intervene in our world, really know what they are asking. Will they want to be there when God really does intervene?
C. S. LewisRead
The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.
Frank HerbertRead
The spirit of non-violence necessarily leads to humility. Non-violence means reliance on God, the rock of ages. If we would seek his aid, we must approach Him with a humble and contrite heart.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years in moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.
Lord ByronRead
The more we retreat from the culture at large the more room we will have to carve out lives of meaning, the more we will be able to wall off the flood of illusions disseminated by mass culture and the more we will retain sanity in an insane world.
Chris HedgesRead