Quotes

last updated: june 2008

Gloria Anzaldúa
Gloria Anzaldúa Legacy Project

I change myself, I change the world.

I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me…

Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice.

What we say and what we do ultimately comes back to us so let us own our responsibility, place it in our hands, and carry it with dignity and strength.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

Staceyann Chin
Imagination is the bridge between the things we know for sure and the things we need to believe when our world becomes unbearable.

Audre Lorde
It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.

Cherríe Moraga
Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation.

When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation.

Bayard Rustin
When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.

To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.

[Bigotry's] birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.