For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.

Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.

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.

If you can't change reality, change your perceptions of it.

Women are powerful and dangerous.

What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.