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It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.
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
Defined
Use
Others
Axiomatic
Detriment
Define
More quotes by Audre Lorde
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
To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
Audre Lorde
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
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
Audre Lorde
. . . 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
Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
Audre Lorde
Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Audre Lorde
What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?
Audre Lorde
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
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
Audre Lorde
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
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
Audre Lorde
Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Audre Lorde
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
Audre Lorde
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
Our visions begin with our desires.
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
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.
Audre Lorde
In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair.
Audre Lorde
The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.
Audre Lorde