Audre Lorde

"The erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation."

"Teaching is not a neutral act. It is always political."

"I want to live and work and learn and contribute to my world and do it all with grace."

"The greatest threat to oppressive systems is self-aware and self-loving people."

"When we choose not to feel deeply, we choose a kind of numbness that blocks out joy as well as pain."

"Transformation cannot happen if we are afraid of the pain involved."

"I am the sum of all my ancestors, and I carry them forward with everything I do."

"The function of feeling is to show us what we truly value."

"We cannot succeed in ignoring the world around us without first ignoring ourselves."

"Every Black woman in america lives her life somewhere along a wide curve of tolerance for racism and sexism."

"Loving oneself is a revolutionary act in a system designed to make you hate yourself."

"The time for being patient with the work of change is long past."

"We touch each other with more than our hands, and that touching is recognition."

"The fear of being powerless is often what stops us from attempting to use our power at all."

"Each of us contains the potential to become whole."

"Silence has never brought us our freedom; only speaking and acting do."

"The future is shaped by those brave enough to imagine it and work to create it."

"We are all affected by oppression not because we perpetrate it, but because we exist within the system."

"The place where we are most afraid is often the place where we most need to go."

"To acknowledge this is not to accept it, but rather to name it as something we will fight."

"Women loving women is a key to our survival as a people and as a movement."

"The lies we tell ourselves become the architecture of our prisons."

"Knowledge alone is not power; it is the application of knowledge that transforms."

"We can use everything we have learned to build something new."

"The moment we stop fighting is the moment we begin to disappear."

"Each experience guides us deeper into ourselves if we allow it to."

"Community is built on the foundation of honest communication and mutual respect."

"Our struggles do not define us; our responses to our struggles define us."

"Language is a place of struggle, and that is where change begins."

"The time we spend in silence costs us more than we know."