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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.

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

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Source: p. 38
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.

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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.

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

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Topics

Poetry

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.

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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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I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

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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.