Quote

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

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
Make
Literature
Time
Race
Multiply
People
Keep
Metaphor
Take
Survive
Enough
Sex
Thing
Personal
Going
Teach
Long
Possible

More quotes by 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
Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.
Audre Lorde
Image
You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for 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
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 train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.
Audre Lorde
Image
What I leave behind has a life of its own.
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
To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
Audre Lorde
Image
I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.
Audre Lorde
Image
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.
Audre Lorde
Image
Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
Audre Lorde
Image
... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
Audre Lorde
Image
Guilt is not a response to anger it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.
Audre Lorde
Image
We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
Audre Lorde
Image
So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
Audre Lorde
Image
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
Audre Lorde
Image
We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.
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
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