Audre Lorde Quotes - Page 2

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...and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.

Audre Lorde

Inspirational, Visibility, Vulnerable

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

40 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

146 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

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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

166 Copy quote
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

59 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

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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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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
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

28 Copy quote
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

39 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

42 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
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

78 Copy quote
In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.

Audre Lorde

Differences, Growth, Progress

Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.86, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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

54 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

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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

60 Copy quote
Revolution is not a one time event.

Audre Lorde

Revolution, Events, One Time

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

55 Copy quote
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.

Audre Lorde

Knowledge, Emotional, Feelings

Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.91, Univ. Press of Mississippi

25 Copy quote
What do we want from each other
after we have told our stories

Audre Lorde

Stories, Want

14 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

87 Copy quote
I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.

Audre Lorde

Change, Curves, Shifting

Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.120, Courier Dover Publications

9 Copy quote
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

Audre Lorde

Ideas, Black History, Way

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For we have built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression and these must be altered at the same time that we alter the living condition which are the result of those structures. For the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house.

Audre Lorde

Expectations, House, Tools

65 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

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

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