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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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My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition.
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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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And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.
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Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.
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Our visions begin with our desires.
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We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
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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You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they're constantly repairing it. It's as if they live in both elements.
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I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.
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In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde
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To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
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It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.
Audre Lorde
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Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
Audre Lorde
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You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for you.
Audre Lorde
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The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
Audre Lorde
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You will never be able to defend your city while shouting.
Audre Lorde
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Poetry is not a luxury.
Audre Lorde
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It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
Audre Lorde