Audre Lorde Quotes

Quotes about:

• It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

  Audre Lorde

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Equality

  282 Copy quote
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  When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

  Audre Lorde

  Strong Women, Honesty, Silence

  Audre Lorde (1995). “The Black Unicorn: Poems”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

  224 Copy quote

• Without community, there is no liberation.

  Audre Lorde

  Change, Community, Collaboration

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

  47 Copy quote

• We are all in the process of becoming.

  Audre Lorde

  Graduation, Becoming, Process

  30 Copy quote

• Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

  Audre Lorde

  Future, Joy, Tomorrow

  Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.96, Courier Dover Publications

  166 Copy quote

• The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.

  Audre Lorde

  Focus, Pieces, Revolutionary

  77 Copy quote

• Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

  Audre Lorde

  Caring, Compassion, Self

  Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.130, Courier Dover Publications

  224 Copy quote

• You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

  Audre Lorde

  Believe, Fire, Order

  22 Copy quote

• When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

  Audre Lorde

  Inspirational, Strength, Success

  "The Cancer Journals". Book by Audre Lorde, 1980.

  230 Copy quote

• There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

  Audre Lorde

  Struggle, Issues, Feminism

  223 Copy quote

• I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

  Audre Lorde

  Feminist, Fearless, Different

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.132, Crossing Press

  185 Copy quote

• Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.

  Audre Lorde

  Women, Responsibility, Gay

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.115, Crossing Press

  167 Copy quote

• Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

  Audre Lorde

  Accepting, Used, Diminish

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.146, Crossing Press

  32 Copy quote

• Divide and conquer must become define and empower.

  Audre Lorde

  Empowering, Conquer, Divide And Conquer

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

  123 Copy quote

• It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

  Audre Lorde

  Order, Differences, House

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

  164 Copy quote

• You are the one that you are looking for.

  Audre Lorde

  Healing, Lourdes

  41 Copy quote

• Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it. ... pain will always either change or stop. Always. ... The confidence that it will change is what makes bearing it possible. So pain is fluid. It is only when you conceive of it as something static that it is unbearable.

  Audre Lorde

  Pain, Important, Unbearable

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.16, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

• The speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.

  Audre Lorde

  Love You, Creativity, Missing

  189 Copy quote

• Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.

  Audre Lorde

  Pain, Important, Deals

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.16, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  16 Copy quote

• When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.

  Audre Lorde

  Teaching, Matter, Reach Out

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.14, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  30 Copy quote

• Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don't want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.

  Audre Lorde

  Voice, Issues, Black

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.197, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  59 Copy quote

• ... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

  Audre Lorde

  Dream, Names, Ideas

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.37, Crossing Press

  29 Copy quote

• If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

  Audre Lorde

  Inspiring, Being Yourself, People

  193 Copy quote

• I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

  Audre Lorde

  Fear, Women, Writing

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.90, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  41 Copy quote

• The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.

  Audre Lorde

  Process, Riot, Learning Process

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.98, Crossing Press

  31 Copy quote

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