Audre Lorde Quotes

On finally saying the thing you have been swallowing:

Your silence will not protect you.

On trying to change a broken system using its own methods:

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

On working through conflict with someone very different from you:

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

On acting despite fear instead of waiting for it to go away:

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.

On defending creative work that others call impractical:

Poetry is not a luxury.

On caring about a cause that does not directly affect you:

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

Deciding whether to keep fighting a hard change alone or bring others into it:

Without community there is no liberation.

Deciding whether to use your anger as fuel for change instead of suppressing it:

Anger is loaded with information and energy.

Deciding whether to say the true thing even if it gets misunderstood:

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.

Deciding whether to trust logic or feeling when choosing your next step:

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.

Deciding whether to trust deep feeling as a guide, not just a distraction:

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.

On justifying rest without feeling guilty about it:

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

Deciding whether to speak openly about a diagnosis instead of keeping it private:

I am a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use.

Reordering your priorities after a health scare made your mortality real:

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light.