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Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde Quotes

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Famous Audre Lorde Quotes

“But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alter native in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.”

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Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“For within livin structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, our feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets.”

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Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.”

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Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut stanchions against our nightmare of weakness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling”

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Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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