Audre Lorde Quotes

156 Sourced Quotes

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
The secret to not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving. It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched.

Audre Lorde
When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying.

Audre Lorde
I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.

Audre Lorde
Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

Audre Lorde
It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

Audre Lorde
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. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.

Audre Lorde
I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.

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

Audre Lorde
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
The fear of death is that you are dying too soon. Nobody wants to, but at the point that you die you can pray that you are no longer the same person. I pray that when I am about to die I will not be the same person that I am now.

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

Audre Lorde
I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out, so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you?

Audre Lorde
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
now take my word for jewel in the open light.

Audre Lorde
What I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?

Audre Lorde
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
I stand here as a black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable....

Audre Lorde
Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive.

Audre Lorde
I is the total black
being spoken
from the earth's inside.

Audre Lorde
Every Black woman in America lives her life somewhere along a wide curve of ancient and unexpressed angers.

Audre Lorde
The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Audre Lorde
The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.

Audre Lorde
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
Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

Audre Lorde
I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.

Audre Lorde