Audre Lorde Quotes
We recognize that all knowledge is mediated through the body and that feeling is a profound source of information about our lives
Say what you have to say now! Don't wait until you're sending blips from the other side.
But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That's what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it's the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it.
Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.
We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.
Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.
Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
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. . . .
I am a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use.
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.
and when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are still afraidSo it is better to speakrememberingwe were never meant to survive
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.
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.
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.
If this society ascribes roles to Black men which they are not allowed to fulfill, is it Black women who must bend and alter our lives to compensate, or is it society that needs changing?
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.
What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope.
Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all.
No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.
Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act write speak be I'll be sending messages on a ouija board cryptic complaints from the other side.
While we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness the weight of that silence will choke us.
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.
When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.