Quotes from Audre Lorde

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.

How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use?

For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.

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

There are lesbians, God knows... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists.

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

The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.

I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first, a little, and badly. Then, bit by bit, more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do.

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.

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

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.

Our visions begin with our desires.

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

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

The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries.

The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.

In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.

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.

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.

Women are powerful and dangerous.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.

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.