Quotes by Audre Lorde

About Audre Lorde:

Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, radical feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist. One of her most notable efforts was her activist work with Afro-German women in the 1980s. She spoke on issues surrounding civil rights, feminism, and oppression. Her work gained both wide acclaim and wide criticism, due to the elements of social liberalism and sexuality presented in her work and her emphasis on revolution and change. She died of breast cancer in 1992, at the age of 58.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

...and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.

Audre Lorde

...oppression is as American as apple pie...

Audre Lorde

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 silence will choke us.

Audre Lorde

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

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

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

I write for those 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 would save us, but it won't.

Audre Lorde

There are lesbians, God knows... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists.

Audre Lorde

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

Audre Lorde

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.

Audre Lorde

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

Audre Lorde

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

Audre Lorde

Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.

Audre Lorde

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.

Audre Lorde

It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.

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

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

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

When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

But, on the other hand, 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

Author Bio

  • NameAudre Lorde
  • DescriptionWriter and activist
  • BornFebruary 18, 1934
  • DiedNovember 11, 1992
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionLibrarian; Poet; Novelist; Writer; Author
  • AwardsLambda Literary Award