Audre Lorde Self Quotations

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.

We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.

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.

The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .

Self-care is not about self-indulgence , it is about self-preservati on.

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.

To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.

I am still learning - how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in the service of what I believe, how to accept when I fail and rejoice when I succeed.

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.

My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restriction of externally imposed definition.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.