If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From "Poetry is Not a Luxury")
Interpretation
Dreaming is essential for empowerment and the future, and dismissing it undermines our essence.
In this quote, Audre Lorde emphasizes the vital role that dreams and aspirations play in energizing and empowering individuals, particularly women. She argues that when society views the act of dreaming as a mere luxury, it undermines the foundational strength and potential that dreams provide, ultimately jeopardizing the future and vitality of communities.
In practice
This quote can inspire a women's empowerment workshop.
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.
Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.
Where constraint breaks people, and mediation makes fools of them, the seduction of power is what makes them love their oppression. Because of it, people give up their real riches for a cause that mutilates them; for an appearance that reifies them; for roles that wrest them from authentic life; for a time whose passage defines and confines them.
Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life. The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated
It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.
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