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

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We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
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It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
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But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
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When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
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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.
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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.
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The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.
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Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.
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Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
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Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.
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Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
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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.
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One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.
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. . . 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.
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