Skip to content

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects — born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

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

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: p. 55
Work: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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 →

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 →

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.