Audre Lorde Quotations

In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.

Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.

One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.

My fear of anger taught me nothing.

Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter.

As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live.

Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.

I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.