If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive
Interpretation
Self-definition is crucial to avoid being shaped by others' expectations.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-identity and personal autonomy. Audre Lorde warns that if individuals do not take the initiative to define who they are, they risk being molded by the perceptions and fantasies of others, which can lead to a loss of individuality and a sense of being overwhelmed by external pressures.
In practice
This quote can inspire students in a graduation speech about embracing their own identities.
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 not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
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.
An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
Year's end, all _x000D_ _x000D_ corners of this _x000D_ _x000D_ floating world, swept.
But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.
Even the blind and meek and voiceless have gods.
I see in the rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, civilization clashes and the use of religious justification for acts of terror, a clear and present danger to humanity.
Who is pure in heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil--and by their own virtues too. The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus.
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