I am deliberate and afraid of nothing. — 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

The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less 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

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now. — Audre Lorde

There is no thing as a single–issue struggle because we do not live single–issue lives. — Audre Lorde

We recognize that all knowledge is mediated through the body and that feeling is a profound source of information about our lives. — 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

Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before. — Audre Lorde

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. — Audre Lorde

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. — Audre Lorde

But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women. — Audre Lorde

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

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other. — Audre Lorde

When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture. — 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

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

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

Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. — Audre Lorde

When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid. — Audre Lorde

When times are hard, do something. If it works, do it some more. If it does not work, do something else. But keep going. — Audre Lorde

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction. — Audre Lorde

But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That’s what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it’s the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it. — Audre Lorde

I am my best work–a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines. — Audre Lorde

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self–indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival. — Audre Lorde

Caring for myself is not self–indulgence, it is self–preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. — Audre Lorde