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Audre Lorde

165 quotes

“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 (1934–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Cancer Journals (1980)
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Uses of Anger : Women Responding to Racism (1981)
“When I speak of the erotic, then I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much (1990) by Anne Wilson Schaef, entry for June 26: "Living Life Fully
“Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever / Only, nothing is eternal.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Feminism must be on the cutting edge of real social change if it is to survive as a movement in any particular country.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Burst of Light (1988), cited in Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
“Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I stared at this earnest young black man for a moment. Suddenly my hair became very political. Waves of horror washed over me. How many forms of religious persecution are we now going to visit upon one another as black people in the name of our public safety? And suppose I was a Rastafarian? What then? Why did that automatically mean I could not vacation in Virgin Gorda? Did it make my tourist dollars unusable?”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me — to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The grapes in Uzbekistan are incredible fruit. They seem to have a life of their own. They’re called “the bridesmaid’s little finger,” and that’s about the size of them. They’re very long, and green, and they’re absolutely the most delicious.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For women, then, 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 external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is not easy to sustain belief in its efficacy. We can sometimes work long and hard to establish one beachhead of real resistance to the deaths we are expected to live, only to have that beachhead assaulted or threatened by those canards we have been socialized to fear, or by the withdrawal of those approvals that we have been warned to seek for safety.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the implementation of that freedom.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your silence will not protect you.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us. In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and thereby the right to dominance.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Heterosexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one’s own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For Black women as well as Black men, 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. The development of self-defined Black women, ready to explore and pursue our power and interests within our communities, is a vital component in the war for Black liberation.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the interests of separation, Black women have been taught to view each other as always suspect, heartless competitors for the scarce male, the all-important prize that could legitimize our existence. This dehumanizing denial of self is no less lethal than the dehumanization of racism to which it is so closely allied.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As Black women we have the right and responsibility to define ourselves and to seek our allies in common cause: with Black men against racism, and with each other and white women against sexism. But most of all, as Black women we have the right and responsibility to recognize each other without fear and to love where we choose. Both lesbian and heterosexual Black women today share a history of bonding and strength to which our sexual identities and our other differences must not blind us.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. 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. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word , the personification of love in all its aspects — born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ascetic position is one of the highest fear, the gravest immobility. The severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession. And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Understanding is a hand-maiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. 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 oppression as women.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The erotic cannot be felt secondhand.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama. For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface. Black women have particular and legitimate issues which affect our lives as Black women, and addressing those issues does not make us any less Black.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Black feminists speak as women because we are women and do not need others to speak for us.”
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source