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The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.

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
Lesson
Strongest
Son
Lessons
Daughter
Teach
Wish
Wishes

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You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for you.
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Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
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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.
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... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
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I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.
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The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
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We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
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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.
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Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.
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The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference. . . .
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Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.
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Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.
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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.
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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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We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.
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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.
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The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
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I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.
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It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
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Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
Audre Lorde