Quote

Our visions begin with our desires.

Audre Lorde

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Audre Lorde
Age: 58 †
Born: 1934
Born: February 18
Died: 1992
Died: November 17
Essayist
Feminist
Librarian
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Audre Geraldine Lorde
Desire
Inspirational
Visions
Desires
Begin
Vision
Seeing

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.
Audre Lorde
Image
The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. . . .
Audre Lorde
Image
It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.
Audre Lorde
Image
From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.
Audre Lorde
Image
It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.
Audre Lorde
Image
Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
Audre Lorde
Image
When you are a member of an out-group, and you challenge others with whom you share this outsider position to examine some aspect of their lives that distorts differences between you, then there can be a great deal of pain.
Audre Lorde
Image
I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
Audre Lorde
Image
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
Audre Lorde
Image
Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach — love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go.
Audre Lorde
Image
My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition.
Audre Lorde
Image
I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.
Audre Lorde
Image
Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.
Audre Lorde
Image
For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.
Audre Lorde
Image
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
Audre Lorde
Image
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
Audre Lorde
Image
Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.
Audre Lorde
Image
To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.
Audre Lorde
Image
Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Audre Lorde
Image
Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.
Audre Lorde