Audre Lorde Quotes - Page 2

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Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

Audre Lorde

Life And Love, War, Remember

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.119, Crossing Press

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I am still learning - how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in the service of what I believe, how to accept when I fail and rejoice when I succeed.

Audre Lorde

Perseverance, Believe, Self

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My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition.

Audre Lorde

Self, Who I Am, Energy

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For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

Audre Lorde

Real, Games, Differences

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The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .

Audre Lorde

Self, Silence, Action

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.42, Crossing Press

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‎Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.

Audre Lorde

Love, Inspiring, Happiness

Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.92, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

Audre Lorde

Inspirational, Believe, Acceptance

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.40, Crossing Press

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... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.

Audre Lorde

Differences, Silence

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.44, Crossing Press

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Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.

Audre Lorde

I Love You, Inspiring, Valentines Day

Audre Lorde (2000). “The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde”, p.64, W. W. Norton & Company

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Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.

Audre Lorde

Blessed, Battle, Able

Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.119, Courier Dover Publications

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If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.

Audre Lorde

Pain, Air, Justice

Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.74, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.

Audre Lorde

Real, Differences, Silence

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.41, Crossing Press

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We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.

Audre Lorde

Knowing, Bed, Wake Up

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive

Audre Lorde

Alive, Fantasy, Define Yourself

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Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.

Audre Lorde

Children, Growing Up, White

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.119, Crossing Press

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Without community, there is no liberation...but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.

Audre Lorde

Mean, Differences, Community

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Oppression is as American as apple pie.

Audre Lorde

Apples, Pie, Apple Pie

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.114, Crossing Press

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Institutionalized rejection of differences is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate.

Audre Lorde

Thinking, Differences, People

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

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For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut stanchions against our nightmare of weakness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling

Audre Lorde

Beautiful, Creativity, Dark

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.36, Crossing Press

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To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.

Audre Lorde

Motivation, Reality, Self

82 Copy quote
Anger is loaded with information and energy.

Audre Lorde

Anger, Energy, Information

"The left needs to take a leaf out of Jesus' book - and get angry" by Steven W Thrasher, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2017.

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Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.

Audre Lorde

Skills, Circles, Differences

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Revolution is not a one time event.

Audre Lorde

Revolution, Events, One Time

"Sister Outsider". Book by Audre Lorde, 1984.

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It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.

Audre Lorde

Meaningful, Mistake, Destiny

Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.77, Univ. Press of Mississippi

53 Copy quote
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

Audre Lorde

Differences, People, Rejection

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

88 Copy quote

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Born: February 18, 1934
Died: November 17, 1992
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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