Quote

Guilt is not a response to anger it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.

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
Actions
Anger
Response
Action
Defensiveness
Guilt
Lack

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.
Audre Lorde
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Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
Audre Lorde
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Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
Audre Lorde
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I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.
Audre Lorde
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Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
Audre Lorde
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What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.
Audre Lorde
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One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde
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Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
Audre Lorde
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We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
Audre Lorde
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I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
Audre Lorde
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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
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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
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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.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde
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But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
Audre Lorde
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The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. . . .
Audre Lorde
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I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
Audre Lorde
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Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
Audre Lorde
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What I leave behind has a life of its own.
Audre Lorde