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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.

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

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More by Audre Lorde

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

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Rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression.

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

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The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need.

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The knowledge of fear can help make us free.

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Difference does not have to be threatening.

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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)

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Topics

Anger

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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

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

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

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

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

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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.