Quote

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

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
World
Beyond
Define
Feminists
Strength
Conquer
Empower
Differences
Feminist
Divide
Literature
Recognize
Divides
Become
Lessons
Empowering
Firsts
Reach
Academic
First
Failure
Crucial
Must
Difference
Lesson
Patriarchal

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
Audre Lorde
Image
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
Audre Lorde
Image
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side
Audre Lorde
Image
All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
Audre Lorde
Image
But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society.
Audre Lorde
Image
I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.
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
In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.
Audre Lorde
Image
Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Audre Lorde
Image
I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
Audre Lorde
Image
I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.
Audre Lorde
Image
Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.
Audre Lorde
Image
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
Audre Lorde
Image
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
Audre Lorde
Image
Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.
Audre Lorde
Image
Without community, there is no liberation.
Audre Lorde
Image
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open. Love is a word another kind of open — As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside. Take my word for jewel in your open light.
Audre Lorde
Image
And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.
Audre Lorde
Image
Our visions begin with our desires.
Audre Lorde
Image
I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.
Audre Lorde