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.
The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.
Virtue isn't not wronging others but not wishing to wrong others.
But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.
Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.
If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize itβs all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You donβt awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
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