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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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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
Women
Feared
Need
Nurture
Real
Connection
Needs
Connections
World
Within
Rediscovered
Knowledge
Redemptive
Desire
Pathological
Power
Patriarchal
More quotes by Audre Lorde
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
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
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. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach — love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go.
Audre Lorde
I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.
Audre Lorde
Your silence will not protect you.
Audre Lorde
... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
Audre Lorde
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
Audre Lorde
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
Audre Lorde
To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
Audre Lorde
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
All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
Audre Lorde
Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
Audre Lorde
I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960's, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.
Audre Lorde
The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our own oppression as women.
Audre Lorde
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
Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
Audre Lorde
Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
Audre Lorde
You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for you.
Audre Lorde
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.
Audre Lorde
Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideasl The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves--along with the renewed courage to try them out.
Audre Lorde