131 Audre Lorde Quotes That Continue To Make a Difference
Lorde wrote about matters relating to feminism, classism, and homophobia at a time when it was difficult to do so. She valiantly spoke her mind and was vocal about what she believed in. She saw herself a warrior and viewed her work as a responsibility that she owed. Her work still resonates today, which is why this article features some of the most famous Audre Lorde quotes written.
Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde in New York City on February 18, 1934, Audre Lorde was an African American feminist, activist, and poet. She developed a love for writing as a young child, and her first published poem was as a teenager in a popular teenage magazine. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in 1959 and a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University in 1961. Having worked to put herself to school, Lorde was a librarian for many years before her first work of poetry, The First Cities, was published in 1968. Other works include From a Land Where Other People Live (1975) which deals with anger, social injustice, and feminism, The Cancer Journals (1980) which also deals with feminism, as well as lesbian issues, and her battle with cancer, and Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), in which Lorde talks about her identity as a Black lesbian, mother, cancer survivor and activist.
She spoke for women who could not speak for themselves. Her words continue to make a difference, to challenge, encourage and inform. Read and be inspired.
Table of Contents
- Audre Lorde’s Best Quotes
- Audre Lorde Quotes about Women and Feminism
- Motivational Quotes by Audre Lorde
- Audre Lorde’s Empowerment Quotes
- Audre Lorde’s Insightful Quotes
- Audre Lorde’s Love Quotes
- Audre Lorde Quotes about Being Different
- Audre Lorde’s Racism and Oppression Quotes
- Audre Lorde Quotes on Art and Poetry
- Audre Lorde Quotes On Images
Audre Lorde’s Best Quotes
- The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us — the poet — whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Audre Lorde
- All our children are outriders for a queendom not yet assured. Audre Lorde
- We have been sad long enough to make this earth either weep or grow fertile. Audre Lorde
- …may I never lose that terror that keeps me brave. Audre Lorde
- Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. Audre Lorde
- The need for unity is often misnamed as a need for homogeneity. Audre Lorde
- There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not lead single issue lives. Audre Lorde
- We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not. Audre Lorde
- Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs. Audre Lorde
- Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat. Audre Lorde
- When patriarchy dismisses us, it encourages our murderers. Audre Lorde
- There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt. Audre Lorde
- Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. Audre Lorde
- We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. Audre Lorde
- Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason. Audre Lorde
- Anger is loaded with information and energy. Audre Lorde
- How are you practicing what you preach—whatever you preach, and who is exactly listening? Audre Lorde
- … what is most important must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. Audre Lorde
- The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible. Audre Lorde
- I had discovered a new world called voluntary aloneness. Audre Lorde
- I feel trapped on a lonely star. Audre Lorde
- Maybe that is all any bravery is, a stronger fear of not being brave. Audre Lorde
- Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless. Audre Lorde
- I have died too many deaths that were not mine. Audre Lorde
- It’s difficult to talk about double messages without having a twin tongue. Audre Lorde
- I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy. Audre Lorde
- Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time. Audre Lorde
- We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. Audre Lorde
- How hard it is to sleep in the middle of life. Audre Lorde
- If you conquer the bread problem, that gives you at least a chance to look around at the others. Audre Lorde
- The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot. Audre Lorde
- People in markets find a way of getting down to the essentials of I have, you want; you have, I want. Audre Lorde
- We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves. Audre Lorde
- Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it. Audre Lorde
- I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness. Audre Lorde
- I thought of the African way of perceiving life, as experience to be lived rather than as problem to be solved. Audre Lorde
- The language by which we have been taught to dismiss ourselves and our feelings as suspect is the same language we use to dismiss and suspect each other. Audre Lorde
- The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions. Audre Lorde
- There are so many roots to the tree of angerthat sometimes the branches shatter before they bear. Audre Lorde
- What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde Quotes about Women and Feminism
- I have been woman for a long time beware my smile I am treacherous with old magic. Audre Lorde
- Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. Audre Lorde
- Women see ourselves diminished or softened by the falsely benign accusations of childishness, of nonuniversality, of changeability, of sensuality. Audre Lorde
- The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries. Audre Lorde
- The cockroach who is dying and the woman who is blind agree not to notice each other’s shame. Audre Lorde
- Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women. Audre Lorde
- I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. Audre Lorde
- Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men. Audre Lorde
- But Black women and our children know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and with hatred, that there is no rest. Audre Lorde
- What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face? 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
- But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women. Audre Lorde
- But the Black male consciousness must be raised to the realization that sexism and woman-hating are critically dysfunctional to his liberation as a Black man because they arise out of the same constellation that engenders racism and homophobia. Audre Lorde
- Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly inferior capacity to feel deeply. Audre Lorde
- The image of the Angolan woman with a baby on one arm and a gun in the other is neither romantic nor fanciful. Audre Lorde
- I write for these women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us, but it won’t. Audre Lorde
- 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. Audre Lorde
- Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being. Audre Lorde
Motivational Quotes by Audre Lorde
- Your silence will not protect you. Audre Lorde
- Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now. Audre Lorde
- When times are hard, do something. If it works, do it some more. If it does not work, do something else. But keep going. Audre Lorde
- When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak. Audre Lorde
- You need to reach down and touch the thing that’s boiling inside of you and make it somehow useful. Audre Lorde
- We learn to work when we are tired, so we can learn to work when we are afraid. Audre Lorde
- How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use? Audre Lorde
- If I do not bring all of who I am to whatever I do, then I bring nothing, or nothing of lasting worth, for I have withheld my essence. Audre Lorde
- Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Audre Lorde
- We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty… Audre Lorde
- You cannot, you cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it. Audre Lorde
- Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing. Audre Lorde
- Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. Audre Lorde
- 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
- All of our children are prey. How do we raise them not to prey upon themselves and each other? And this is why we cannot be silent, because our silences will come to testify against us out of the mouths of our children. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde’s Empowerment Quotes
- I am deliberate and afraid of nothing. Audre Lorde
- You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for. Audre Lorde
- In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower. Audre Lorde
- Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. Audre Lorde
- Part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters. 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
- We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about – survival and growth. Audre Lorde
- When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. Audre Lorde
- …and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Audre Lorde
- Within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not – I am not only a causality, I am also a warrior. Audre Lorde
- What you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde’s Insightful Quotes
- For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Audre Lorde
- When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I’m not excluding you from the joining – I’m broadening the joining. Audre Lorde
- What better way is there to police the streets of a minority community than to turn one generation against the other? Audre Lorde
- What happens when you narrow your definition to what is convenient, or what is fashionable, or what is expected, is dishonesty by silence. Audre Lorde
- Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change. Audre Lorde
- It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. Audre Lorde
- Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country. Audre Lorde
- When the desire for definition, self or otherwise, comes out of a desire for limitation rather than a desire for expansion, no true face can emerge. Audre Lorde
- The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. Audre Lorde
- And I find I must remember that the pain is not its own reason for being. It is a part of living. And the only kind of pain that is intolerable is pain that is wasteful, pain from which we do not learn. And I think that we must learn to distinguish between the two. Audre Lorde
- I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde’s Love Quotes
- Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever. Audre Lorde
- The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. Audre Lorde
- We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit. Audre Lorde
- Love is a word, another kind of open. As the diamond comes into a knot of flame I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside take my word for jewel in the open light. Audre Lorde
- The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane… Audre Lorde
- I can’t really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too? Audre Lorde
- Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away. Audre Lorde
- We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. Audre Lorde
- Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms. Audre Lorde
- When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives. Audre Lorde
- The terror of Black Lesbians is buried in that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference—to kill or ignore it. Be assured: loving women is not a communicable disease. You don’t catch it like the common cold. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde Quotes about Being Different
- You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. Audre Lorde
- Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged. Audre Lorde
- It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. Audre Lorde
- Ιt is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. Audre Lorde
- In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction. Audre Lorde
- Without community, there is no liberation…but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. Audre Lorde
- Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. Audre Lorde
- The supposition that one sex needs the other’s acquiescence in order to exist prevents both from moving together as self-defined persons toward a common goal. Audre Lorde
- We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable. Audre Lorde
- Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde’s Racism and Oppression Quotes
- …oppression is as American as apple pie… Audre Lorde
- I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell. Audre Lorde
- This continued blindness between us can only serve the oppressive system within which we live. Audre Lorde
- For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call America, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson—that we were never meant to survive. 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. Audre Lorde
- What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable. Audre Lorde
- I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society. Audre Lorde
- There’s always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself – whether it’s Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. – because that’s the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde Quotes on Art and Poetry
- Art is not living. It is the use of living. Audre Lorde
- Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. Audre Lorde
- The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives. Audre Lorde
- Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. Audre Lorde
- When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn’t matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry. Audre Lorde
- I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else’s blood. Audre Lorde
- We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created. Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde Quotes On Images
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