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The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Audre Lorde
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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
Firsts
Reach
Academic
First
Failure
Crucial
Must
Difference
Lesson
Patriarchal
World
Beyond
Define
Feminists
Strength
Conquer
Empower
Differences
Feminist
Divide
Literature
Recognize
Divides
Become
Lessons
Empowering
More quotes by Audre Lorde
Our visions begin with our desires.
Audre Lorde
I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.
Audre Lorde
There are no honest poems about dead women.
Audre Lorde
Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
Audre Lorde
It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.
Audre Lorde
I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.
Audre Lorde
Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
Audre Lorde
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
Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
Audre Lorde
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
Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
Audre Lorde
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.
Audre Lorde
If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness we give up the future of our worlds. (From Poetry is Not a Luxury)
Audre Lorde
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
Audre Lorde
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
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
Audre Lorde
. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
Audre Lorde
Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.
Audre Lorde
But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
Audre Lorde
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