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

Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.

Audre Lorde

In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.

Audre Lorde

Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.

Audre Lorde

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

Audre Lorde

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Audre Lorde

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 bo...

Audre Lorde

Our visions begin with our desires.

Audre Lorde

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.

Audre Lorde

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

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

Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any ...

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

The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.

Audre Lorde

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Audre Lorde

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

Audre Lorde

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in ...

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

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 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

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival...

Audre Lorde

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

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