These are hard times. No one can deny that. During hard times, we all can use some motivational words from an elder. Late author Audre Lorde may no longer be walking this planet, but her words and works are undoubtedly still influencing generations of writers.
Suggested Reading
Whether it’s her books of poetry like “From a Land Where Other People Live or her essays such as “Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches, ” Lorde’s contributions to the world are vast.
Because of this, we’d like to take a moment to honor her words, her wisdom and share a handful of quotes that you might need to hear right now and every day after.
Audre Lorde, “Learning From the 60s” (1982)
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.”
“The Cancer Journals”
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present.”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“My daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, ‘Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.’”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge.
“Your Silence Will Not Protect You”
“Your silence will not protect you.”
“Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”
“How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use?”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that is the task of women of Color to educate white women—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves—along with the renewed courage to try them out.”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for.”
“New Year’s Day”
“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing”
“Sister Outside: Essays and Speeches”
“Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.”
