Audre Lorde Quotes - Page 2

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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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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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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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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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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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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

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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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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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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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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

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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

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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

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In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.

Audre Lorde

Order, Energy, Culture

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.53, Crossing Press

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Revolution is not a one time event.

Audre Lorde

Revolution, Events, One Time

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

55 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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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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... 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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Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

Audre Lorde

Communication, Ignorance, Names

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.130, Crossing Press

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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

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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
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Audre Lorde

Peace, Power, House

Title of essay (1979)

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

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