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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.

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
Seen
Tolerated
Must
Spark
Like
Sparks
Fund
Merely
Polarities
Necessary
Dialectic
Creativity
Polarity
Differences
Dialectics

More quotes by Audre Lorde

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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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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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So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
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You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for you.
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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.
Audre Lorde
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Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.
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Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
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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.
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For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.
Audre Lorde
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Raising Black children-female and male-in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive.
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Some words live in my throat breeding like adders. Others know sun seeking like gypsies over my tongue to explode through my lips
Audre Lorde
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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
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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
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Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
Audre Lorde
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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
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Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
Audre Lorde
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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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Art is not living. It is the use of living. The artist has the ability to take the living and use it in a certain way and produce art.
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I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.
Audre Lorde
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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.
Audre Lorde