You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.
Interpretation
Believe in your own potential and creative power rather than relying on others.
Audre Lorde emphasizes the importance of self-belief and personal empowerment in achieving one's goals. The quote suggests that while others may have their own strengths and resources, true progress comes from recognizing and harnessing oneβs inner fire or unique capabilities.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech aimed at young entrepreneurs.
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.
Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.
You may have made a lot of wrong choices, but youβve also made a lot of choices that were right. Focus on your good qualities. Focus on your victories. Get off the treadmill of guilt.
The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new products are not successful. Yet the story of perseverance, creative genius, and hard work persists.
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment - independent will - that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.
I trained for less than three-quarters of an hour, maybe five days a week - I didn't have time to do more. But it was all about quality, not quantity - so I didn't waste time jogging, ever.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.