Skip to content

The power to kill is less than the power to create, for it produces an ending rather than the beginning of something new.

— Audre Lorde Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: No source given
Work: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

More by Audre Lorde

All our children are outriders for a queendom not yet assured.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Narcissism comes not out of self-love but out of self-hatred.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

The knowledge of fear can help make us free.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Difference does not have to be threatening.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

One oppression does not justify another.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

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

The Uses of Anger : Women Responding to Racism (1981)

All Audre Lorde quotes →

Topics

Justice

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

We are jointly responsible for the care and raising of the young, since that they be raised is a function, ultimately, of the species.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

All Audre Lorde quotes →

You may also like

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

If the church ... does not make God's liberation of the oppressed central in its mission and proclamation, how can it rest easy with a condemned criminal as the dominant symbol of its message?

James H. Cone Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986)

It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.

Muhammad

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Audre Lorde (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.