Quote

If you do not learn to hate you will never be lonely enough to love easily nor will you always be brave, although it does not grow any easier. Do not pretend to convenient beliefs, even when they are righteous you will never be able to defend your city while shouting.

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
Love
Learn
Although
Shouting
Hate
Brave
Convenient
Doe
City
Righteous
Able
Easier
Pretend
Enough
Grow
Defend
Even
Cities
Beliefs
Always
Grows
Easily
Never
Belief
Lonely

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair.
Audre Lorde
Image
When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.
Audre Lorde
Image
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.
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 very, very happy for Alice Walker.
Audre Lorde
Image
The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.
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
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
Audre Lorde
Image
The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference. . . .
Audre Lorde
Image
pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.
Audre Lorde
Image
I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
Audre Lorde
Image
Our visions begin with our desires.
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
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
Audre Lorde
Image
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
Audre Lorde
Image
If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.
Audre Lorde
Image
I learned to read from Mrs. Augusta Baker, the children's librarian. ... If that was the only good deed that lady ever did in her life, may she rest in peace. Because that deed saved my life, if not sooner, then later, when sometimes the only thing I had to hold on to was knowing I could read.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.
Audre Lorde
Image
I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.
Audre Lorde