Audre Lorde Quotes

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.

Each one of us had been starved for love for so long that we wanted to believe that love, once found...

You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went awa...

A choice of pains. That's what living was all about.

I cried to think of how lucky we both were to have found each other, since it was clear that we were...

Dark-bright fire lit eyes

Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of mys...

The breakdown of mummies and daddies was an important part of lesbian relationships in the Bagatelle...

DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood wom...

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another ...

My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken,...

I do not wish my anger and pain and fear about cancer to fossilize into yet another silence, nor to ...

and when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are s...

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it lea...

I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, t...

Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us f...

Revolution is not a one time event.

He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, to...

It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as ...

The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reac...

Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is peri...

Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educat...

Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which r...

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat hi...

If this society ascribes roles to Black men which they are not allowed to fulfill, is it Black women...

No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied ...

Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindne...

The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to es...

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, i...

Black men are not so passive that they must have Black women speak for them. Even my fourteen-year-o...

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak ...

However, experience has taught us that action in the now is also necessary, always. Our children can...

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

The angers between women will not kill us if we can articulate them with precision, if we listen to ...

Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those diff...

As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed t...

I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insu...

I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as t...

This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion ...

When there is no connection at all between people, then anger is a way of bringing them closer toget...

Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expe...

What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little ro...

We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we l...

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You hear your children will grow up to join the pat...

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

Each of us is called upon to take a stand. So in these days ahead, as we examine ourselves and each ...

Love is a word, another kind of open.As the diamond comesinto a knot of flameI am Blackbecause I com...

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently ...

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily bea...

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of ...

Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those ...

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

When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less an...

It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not ha...

Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always ...

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining ...

...and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greate...

Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the found...

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken made ve...

When we admit and deal with difference; when we deal with the deep bitterness; when we deal with the...

We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are distorted and destroyed,...

But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women...

If you come as softlyAs wind within the treesYou may hear what I hearSee what sorrow sees.If you com...

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we l...

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and...

I seek no favor untouched by blood.

Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things tha...

The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.

...oppression is as American as apple pie...

Laten we op zoek gaan naar 'vreugde' in plaats van naar eerlijk voedsel en schone lucht en een gezon...

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and gro...

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had th...

. . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves...

I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the ...

I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first a little and...

For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and...

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

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs o...

Hatred is a death wish for the hated not a life wish for anything else.

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not pr...

Our visions begin with our desires.

But anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a libe...

I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act write speak be I'll be sending messa...

When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop tho...

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what ...

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and e...

There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mo...

I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy...

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehuman...

When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid...

We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the ...

Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of B...

Without community, there is no liberation...but community must not mean a shedding of our difference...

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made ve...

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less an...