Ralph Ellison Quotes

You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself.

I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.

Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image

We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.

Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. I don't know all the keys to success, but one key to failure is to try to please everyone.

I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost.

I need to have perspective. That's one of the big things former players told me, to not try to live up to anything, just live up to yourself.

I'm losing myself trying to compete with everyone else, instead of just being me.

We're so quick to cut away pieces of ourselves to suit a particular relationship, a job, a circle of friends, incessantly editing who we are until we fit in.

Better than other people.' Sometimes he says: 'That, at least, you are.' But more often: 'Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not - like other people.

So often, we're expected to maintain some sort of standard - that won't get you where you need to go.

There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves.

If I wasted my time trying to be like everybody else when I was 10 and 11, I wouldn't be me today. So if you are gonna be the future rockstars, the future somebody, whatever you wanna be then you're wasting your time trying to be somebody else, because you'll never get to you.

I don't want to make the same mistakes of being swept along with things, taking on jobs that I'm not passionate about, that I don't really believe in but that everyone says I should do.

People tried to make me something that I wasn't at the beginning of my career.

My mother started out by being a very good girl. She did everything that was expected of her, and it cost her dearly. Late in her life, she was furious that she had not followed her own heart; she thought that it had ruined her life, and I think she was right.

The challenge is how strange and different my voice sounds, so I have tried to sound like other people and tried to be something I wasn't. I have tried to be a soul singer because someone else thought that a good idea. Not because I did.

I think the more important task for a young person than developing a personal brand is figuring out what she's great at, what she loves to do, and how she can use that to leave an imprint in the world. Those are tough questions, but essential ones. Answer those - and the personal brand follows.

Everyone kept telling me, Just be yourself. Be yourself. I kept thinking, there's got to be more to it than that!

I'd be like, 'You're a young, vibrant woman. Where are you?' I realized that I had been living in denial.

The world calls me conceited. The world is in error. I trace all the blunders of my life to sacrificing my own party to that of others.

My deepest desire is to do the thing that is first and foremost just.

I spent so long trying to be other people, and it made me really deeply unhappy.

If I didn't finish high school, I would wonder about that part of my life.

When I was working for WWE I felt like I was trying to make someone else's vision happen instead of my own. And I think that's where I became less true to myself and I think it showed in my work.