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"Each of us is called upon to take a stand. So in these days ahead, as we examine ourselves and each other, our works, our fears, our differences, our sisterhood and survivals, I urge you to tackle what is most difficult for us all, self-scrutiny of our complacencies, the idea that since each of us believes she is on the side of right, she need not examine her position."
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Exlpore more Self-Reflection quotes
"The truth is that most of us are not our best selves."
"When you truly face your pain you will only see yourself. Your fear was always you."
"If you have never seen a masterpiece, look in the mirror."
"Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream."
"Oh, how clearly I see your faults! Such distinctly highlighted flaws; it's as if the sun and moon mean to keep them illuminated in my eyes. My mind is quick to spell out a simple remedy for those defects. But alas, poor me! My own faults-which I only assume to have because all do-are blurred and obscured by a mental fog. I've no eyes with which to gaze back at myself. The sun and moon refuse their illumination, and my mind offers no sure elixir but a complex recipe scribbled in foreign words I scarcely comprehend."
"I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets."
"I put myself and all the members of Congress in the same boat of things that could have been done better."
"Behold, behold."
"Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self."
"If there is wrong [ill] on the inside, the outside will appear wrong. Therefore, you should inquire within 'why am I bothered, when others are not? So there must be wrong within me only."
Explore more quotes by Audre Lorde
"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."
"When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid."
"You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they're constantly repairing it. It's as if they live in both elements."
"Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests."
"There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else."
"In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men."
"Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men."
"Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation."
"I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain."
"We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid."
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