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If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.

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
Pain
Alter
Social
Protest
Cannot
Surely
Diversity
Air
Beginning
Justice
Dies

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.
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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.
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For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut stanchions against our nightmare of weakness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling
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There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
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We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
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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.
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Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
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The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.
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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.
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Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
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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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One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.
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I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.
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There are lesbians, God knows... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists.
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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.
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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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Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
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I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.
Audre Lorde
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What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?
Audre Lorde
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If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
Audre Lorde