Top Audre Lorde Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Audre Lorde Biography

Audre Lorde (/ˈɔːdri lɔːrd/; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity.

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Audre Lorde Quotes

Silence has never brought us anything of worth.

Brought, Silence, Worth

Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

Common, Competition, Define, Moving, Racism, Women

I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.

Feeling, Fine, Gay, Keys, Lonely, Truth

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.

Earth, Father, Men, Mother, Mountains, Woman

. . . my experience with people who tried to label me was that they usually did it to either dismiss me or use me.

Dismiss, Labels, People, Use, Usually

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.

Dream, Future, Lays, Life, Skeleton, Skeletons

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

Differences, Equality, Inability, Inspirational, Inspiring, Recognize

As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live.

Acceptance, Feminist, Meaningful, Self, Sexual, Woman

Pain is an event. . . Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.

Hands, Nightmare, Pain, Suffering, Unscrutinized

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it. . . . pain will always either change or stop. Always. . . . The confidence that it will change is what makes bearing it possible. So pain is fluid. It is only when you conceive of it as something static that it is unbearable.

Evade, Fluid, Important, Pain, Unbearable

If you do not learn to hate you will never be lonely enough to love easily nor will you always be brave, although it does not grow any easier. Do not pretend to convenient beliefs, even when they are righteous; you will never be able to defend your city while shouting.

Lonely, Hate, Cities, City, Righteous

Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.

Granted, Gratitude, Taken, Victory

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.

Emotional, Feelings, Knowledge, Paths

Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms.

Dealing, Erotic, Lesbian, Lives, Recognition, Steps

It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Alone, Differences, House, Make, Order, Tools

If you can't change reality, change your perceptions of it.

Can'T Change, Change, Perception, Perceptions, Reality

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill. . . For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.

Academic, Allow, Circles, Definition, Differences, Skills

So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.

Meant, Remember, Remembering, Speak, Survive

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

Deals, Feminist, Motivational, Sleep, True, Women

Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.

Opposites, Peace, Spot, Stars, Waiting

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