Audre Lorde Quotes

155 Sourced Quotes

Pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.

Audre Lorde
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.

Audre Lorde
If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?

Audre Lorde
If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.

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

Audre Lorde
It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.

Audre Lorde
For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world...

Audre Lorde
The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our own oppression as women.

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

Audre Lorde
I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

Audre Lorde
Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

Audre Lorde
I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for Humanities conference a year ago....

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
When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.

Audre Lorde
If you come as softly
as wind within the trees
you may hear what I hear
see what sorrow sees.

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
Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose.

Audre Lorde
Racism Cancer. In both cases, to win the aggressor must conquer, but the resisters need only survive.

Audre Lorde
June Jordan once said something which is just wonderful. I'm paraphrasing her-that her function as a poet was to make revolution irresistible. Well o.k. that is the function of us all, as creative artists, to make the truth, as we see it irresistible.

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
For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.

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

Audre Lorde
The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference....

Audre Lorde
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
Unity does not require that we be identical to each other. Black women are not one great vat of homogenized chocolate milk.

Audre Lorde
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Others know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips

Audre Lorde
The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being
ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.

Audre Lorde
When we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

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

Audre Lorde