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Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde Quotes

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Famous Audre Lorde Quotes

“The greatest incidence of breast cancer in american women appears within the ages of 40 to 55. These are the very years when women are portrayed in the popular media as fading and desexualized figures. Contrary to the media picture, I find myself as a woman of insight ascending into my highest powers, my greatest psychic strengths, and my fullest satisfactions. I am freer of the constraints and fears and indecisions of my younger years, and survival throughout these years has taught me how to value my own beauty, and how to look closely into the beauty of others. It has also taught me to value the lessons of survival, as well as my own perceptions. I feel more deeply, value those feelings more, and can put those feelings together with what I know in order to fashion a vision of and pathway toward true change.”

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Book:The Cancer Journals
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“To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.”

KnowsGivingSelfHardReasonRealityActionFacesLife IsMotivationEnemyOur LivesDespairSurvivalToolsAltruismPreservationPowerlessSelf PreservationHard Questions
Author:Audre Lorde
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“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 is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.”

KnowsHas BeensHouseBlackDifferencesPoorMastersSkillsSurvivalToolsDefinitionsCirclesGenuineAcademicAcceptableThis SocietyForgedCrucible
Author:Audre Lorde
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“... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

WayGivingFirstsMadeIdeasHelpingDreamLightActionFormNamesLanguageExistenceQualityRocksSurvivalLuxuryDaily LifePoetry IsHorizonTangibleHopes And DreamsNamelessHopes And FearsLight Within
Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged... We have been taught to either ignore our differences or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression... Survival is learning to take our difference and make them strengths.”

Has BeensValuesIndividualForceCausesCommunityDifferencesViewsPowerfulMoralTaughtSurvivalEthicsConnectionsSeparationOppressionVulnerableLiberationTemporarySuspicionPersonal PowerForgedArmistice
Author:Audre Lorde
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