And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.
Interpretation
We must take responsibility for seeking higher standards and not just accept what is easy or conventional.
In this quote, Audre Lorde emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility in striving for excellence and authenticity. She encourages individuals to look beyond societal norms and superficial safety, urging them to pursue deeper, more meaningful choices that reflect their true selves and values.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and self-improvement.
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.
One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong
Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.
I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain," said he. "Results without causes are much more impressive.
I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.
In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.
Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.
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