Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
Interpretation
To truly understand the fight against dehumanization, one must engage deeply and personally in the struggle.
Audre Lorde emphasizes the importance of personal experience and emotional investment in the fight against dehumanization. She suggests that without living through the realities of oppression and connecting with those affected, it is easy to forget the ongoing nature of this struggle, which requires both courage and compassion.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a panel on social justice to emphasize the importance of empathy.
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.
If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.
It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.
Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle....goa ts are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.
Your greatest fears are created by your imagination. Don't give in to them.
I am not carrying on a war of extermination against the Romans. I am contending for honor and empire. My ancestors yielded to Roman valour. I am endeavouring that others, in their turn, will be obliged to yield to my good fortune, and my valour.
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