If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of expressing pain and striving for change to avoid emotional suffering.
Audre Lorde's quote reflects the concept that unexpressed pain can lead to despair and stagnation. It highlights the necessity of confronting and vocalizing one's struggles as a means to engender social change and personal healing, indicating that the act of protest begins with acknowledging and airing oneβs personal and collective grievances.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for mental health awareness.
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.
I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'.
I realize that men and women of the military go out and sacrifice their lives and put their selves in harm's way for my freedom of speech and my freedoms in this country, and my freedom to take a seat or take a knee, so I have the utmost respect for them, and I think what I did was taken out of context and spun a different way.
Everything is scary if you look at it. So you just got to live.
The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.
In my dreams, I kill him every night,' Robert admitted. 'A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves'.
Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit - appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free . . . .
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.