From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.
Audre LordeNext time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
Audre Lordethe fear of death is that you are dying too soon. Nobody wants to, but at the point that you die you can pray that you are no longer the same person. I pray that when I am about to die I will not be the same person that I am now.
Audre LordeI am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
Audre LordeSome women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.
Audre LordeInstitutionalized rejection of differences is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate.
Audre Lorde