Quote

I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.

Audre Lorde

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Matter
Triumph
Train
Mines
Mine
Knowing

More quotes by Audre Lorde

Image
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side
Audre Lorde
Image
Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.
Audre Lorde
Image
The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Audre Lorde
Image
Women are powerful and dangerous.
Audre Lorde
Image
Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don't want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.
Audre Lorde
Image
I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.
Audre Lorde
Image
What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
Poetry is not a luxury.
Audre Lorde
Image
As we come to know, accept, and explore our feelings, they will become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas-the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.
Audre Lorde
Image
So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
Audre Lorde
Image
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
Audre Lorde
Image
Say what you have to say now! Don't wait until you're sending blips from the other side.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
Audre Lorde
Image
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
Image
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.
Audre Lorde
Image
But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
Audre Lorde
Image
It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.
Audre Lorde
Image
Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
Audre Lorde