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What I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence.

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

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Source: p. 41
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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Topics

Silence

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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To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox New Thought Pastels (1913)

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

George Eliot

There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.

Benedict of Nursia

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?

Federico Fellini I'm a Born Liar (2003)

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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.