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Audre Lorde Quotes

1934–1992 United States

Audre Geraldine Lorde (18 February 1934 – 17 November 1992) was a black writer, feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity.

United States
20th-century poets
Academics
Activists
Authors

Also known as: Audre Geraldine Lorde

Random Audre Lorde quote

107 quotes

As a people, we most certainly must work together.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

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

The erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

The ascetic position is one of the highest fear, the gravest immobility. The severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession. And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

It is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

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.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

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

Feminism must be on the cutting edge of real social change if it is to survive as a movement in any particular country.

A Burst of Light (1988)

As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Without community there is no liberation.

When patriarchy dismisses us, it encourages our murderers. When radical lesbian feminist theory dismisses us, it encourages its own demise.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface. Black women have particular and legitimate issues which affect our lives as Black women, and addressing those issues does not make us any less Black.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

For survival, Black children in america must be raised to be warriors. For survival, they must also be raised to recognize the enemy’s many faces.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

When I envision the future, I think of the world I crave for my daughters and my sons. It is thinking for survival of the species — thinking for life.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

It is not the destiny of Black america to repeat white america’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever
Only, nothing is eternal.

Nothing neutralizes creativity quicker than tokenism, that false sense of security fed by a myth of individual solutions.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Audre Lorde (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.