Audre Lorde

“Your silence will not protect you.”

“I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first, a little, and badly. Then, bit by bit, more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and...”

“Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.”

“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.”

“Our visions begin with our desires.”

“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...”

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share h...”

“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I h...”

“...oppression is as American as apple pie...”

“Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.”

“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silenc...”

“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

“If you come as softly As wind within the trees You may hear what I hear See what sorrow sees. If you come as lightly As threading dew I will take you gladly Nor ask more of you. You may sit...”

“A Litany for Survival For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice...”

“Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home.”

“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.”

“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.”

“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...”

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”