7 quotes
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)
Anger is loaded with information and energy.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival, and before I give it up I’m going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
The angers of women can transform difference through insight into power. For anger between peers births change, not destruction, and the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth.
Women respond to racism. My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar. I have tried to learn my anger’s usefulness to me, as well as its limitations.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
Anger — a passion of displeasure that may be excessive or misplaced but not necessarily harmful. Hatred — an emotional habit or attitude of mind in which aversion is coupled with ill will. Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)