Ralph Ellison Quotes

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

I fear that, tired of anarchy, you may hope at the end for a return of oppression and that you may welcome the yoke of the first fortunate adventurer who shows up, who, far from consolidating your destiny, will only prolong your servitude

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

A thousand men enslaved fear one beast free.

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.

Conquerors never, never conquer a nation to bring freedom. They brought control.

See, it's no in between: you're either free or you're a slave.

Nor was it only from the millions of slaves that chains had been removed; the whole nation had been in bondage; free speech had been suppressed.

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

When you're talking about an authority figure oppressing against people, it's the people that hold that authority figure up. If you want to get free of this bondage, then we need to think about ways to free ourselves rather than looking to the oppressors to free us.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles - the oppression of tyranny - to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Man is everywhere still in chains.

The use of force to liberate people is very different from the use of force to suppress or control them, or even to defeat them.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.

Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions

The tongue is more to be feared than the sword.

It’s often safer to be in chains than to be free.

What distinguishes Germany from America and Western Europe is control by titled land-holders, the lack of civil liberty and free institutions, and the cowardliness of the middle class

Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom on those who are not free.

Systematic recourse to violence put forward as the necessary path to liberation has to be condemned as a destructive illusion and one that opens the way to new forms of servitude. One must condemn with equal vigor violence exercised by the powerful against the poor, arbitrary action by the police, and any form of violence established as a system of government.

The limits of tyrants are proscribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.

The British minister mistakes the Irish character. Had he intended to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar. There is no middle policy … greatly emancipate or fundamentally destroy.

Nothing is greater than to break the chains from the bodies of men—nothing nobler than to destroy the phantom of the soul.

Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.