Audre Lorde

"I would rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not."

"My life is an open letter to the world, written in hope and defiance."

"When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid."

"To be Black and female in this society is to be held within an intricate web of contradictions."

"We cannot simply use the words of our oppressors and expect them to serve us."

"Visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest power."

"The quality of light by which we regard our lives has direct bearing on the quality of the lives we lead."

"It's easy to follow those who walk in light. But to love those who walk in darkness, that is revolutionary."

"We do not have to become each other in order to be for each other."

"The greatest threat to the establishment is an educated Black population."

"When we train girls to feel that they must always be nice, we rob them of the tools to self-preservation."

"There is no Black community. There is no women's community. There are only the communities we create in our choosing."

"Hunger is a human condition and we must feed one another."

"To acknowledge a hierarchy of oppressions is not to dismiss the legitimacy of any one person's struggle."

"We touch each other in ways that are healing, and in those touches, we are transformed."

"The future of our people is contingent upon how we perceive the present and our willingness to struggle for change."

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

"The creative force dwells within each of us, and it is not the sole property of artists alone."

"To be Black and alive in America in the face of this darkness is in itself a form of revolution."

"We must learn to mother ourselves and each other before we can nurture a new and more humane world."

"The war against those of us who are Black is the war against the indigent, the workers, the dispossessed of this earth."

"Your children need to know that they are beautiful, that their minds matter, that their futures are worth fighting for."

"We are made human by our relationships, by what we give and what we receive from one another."

"The most powerful thing that I can do is to be visible and to speak my truth despite my fear."

"To write is to claim agency in a world that would deny it to us."

"We cannot afford to lose our living legacy; we cannot afford to ignore the patterns of how we've been taught to survive."

"Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged."

"The oppressed are expected to stretch out our necks for the executioner's blade, all in the name of progress and forgiveness."

"When we live outside the structure, we are dangerous because we cannot be controlled."

"A woman is not a man. A Black woman is not a white woman. An older woman is not a younger woman."