I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
Interpretation
True freedom is linked to the freedom of all, regardless of their circumstances.
Audre Lorde emphasizes the interconnectedness of liberation and justice in this quote. She asserts that no one can claim to be truly free if others are still oppressed, suggesting that our moral responsibility extends beyond our personal circumstances and calls for solidarity in the fight against injustice.
In practice
During a feminist rally, this quote can inspire unity among all advocates for women's rights.
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.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
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.
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.
As it develops, then, the concept of social space becomes broader. It infiltrates, even invades, the concept of production, becoming part - perhaps the essential part - of its content.
In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.
For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame.
We must reason in natural philosophy not from what we hope, or even expect, but from what we perceive.
Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand the most supreme Way. It is like polishing a mirror, which becomes bright when the dust is removed. Remove your passions, and have no hankering.
He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.
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