Top 350 Audre Lorde Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Strength, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Self-Realization Quotes, Meaningful Quotes, Motivational Quotes for Women

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

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Self-Care Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Resistance Quotes, Compassion Quotes, Caring Quotes

3. “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Quotes About Humanity, Quotes About People, Culture Quotes, Diversity Quotes, Justice Quotes

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

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Women, Motivational Quotes for Women, Strong Women Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Different Quotes

5. “Your silence will not protect you.”

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Commitment Quotes, Resistance Quotes, Strong Women Quotes, Healing Quotes, Silence Quotes

6. “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

Featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Women, Motivational Quotes for Women, Overcoming Fear Quotes, Strong Women Quotes, Silence Quotes

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

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Self-Care Quotes, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Self-Love Quotes, Mental Health Quotes, Caring Quotes

8. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.”

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Resistance Quotes

9. “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Boldness Quotes, Strong Women Quotes, Women Empowerment Quotes

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

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Self-Care Quotes

11. “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Identity Quotes, Life Quotes for Women, Women Empowerment Quotes

12. “Without community, there is no liberation.”

— Audre Lorde

13. “Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.”

— Audre Lorde

14. “If you can’t change reality, change your perceptions of it.”

— Audre Lorde

15. “Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.”

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Future Quotes

16. “You cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.”

— Audre Lorde

17. “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

— Audre Lorde

18. “The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.”

— Audre Lorde

19. “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

— Audre Lorde

20. “Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.”

— Audre Lorde

21. “Women are powerful and dangerous.”

— Audre Lorde

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

— Audre Lorde

23. “Poetry is not a luxury.”

— Audre Lorde

24. “My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival, and before I give it up I’m going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity.”

— Audre Lorde

25. “You are the one that you are looking for.”

— Audre Lorde

26. “Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.”

— Audre Lorde

27. “We are all in the process of becoming.”

— Audre Lorde

28. “Divide and conquer must become define and empower.”

— Audre Lorde

29. “Anger is loaded with information and energy.”

— Audre Lorde

30. “Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.”

— Audre Lorde

31. “I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.”

— Audre Lorde

32. “Revolution is not a one time event.”

— Audre Lorde

33. “I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there.”

— Audre Lorde

34. “I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”

— Audre Lorde

35. “Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded...”

— Audre Lorde

Featured in: Victory Quotes

36. “It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.”

— Audre Lorde

37. “We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.”

— Audre Lorde

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

— Audre Lorde

39. “So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.”

— Audre Lorde

40. “I am my best work – a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.”

— Audre Lorde

41. “Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.”

— Audre Lorde

42. “Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.”

— Audre Lorde

43. “I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.”

— Audre Lorde

44. “I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.”

— Audre Lorde

45. “The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”

— Audre Lorde

46. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

— Audre Lorde

47. “If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That’s the beginning of social protest.”

— Audre Lorde

48. “The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.”

— Audre Lorde

49. “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.”

— Audre Lorde

50. “I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers.”

— Audre Lorde