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

  231 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

  203 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

  176 Copy quote

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

  Audre Lorde

  Struggle, Issues, Feminism

  210 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

  158 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

  156 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

  209 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.

  202 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

  180 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

  156 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

  67 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

  172 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

  36 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

  116 Copy quote

• 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

  162 Copy quote

• 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

  167 Copy quote

• 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

  50 Copy quote

• ‎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

  66 Copy quote

• 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

  139 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

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  155 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?

  Audre Lorde

  Faces, Oppression, Print

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  80 Copy quote

• 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

  38 Copy quote

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