Life & Wisdom Quote by Audre Lorde

"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood"

Audre Lorde, Poet

About this Quote

Lorde isn’t selling confession as a lifestyle accessory; she’s issuing a survival directive. The engine of this line is repetition - "over and over again" - a phrase that reads like hard-earned data, not a single epiphany. Experience keeps re-teaching the same lesson: what matters most doesn’t stay safe just because it stays silent. Silence only guarantees one outcome, and it isn’t protection.

The sentence builds a moral hierarchy with teeth: "what is most important to me" must be "spoken". Not expressed, not hinted at, not privately cherished. Spoken. Made verbal. Shared. Lorde stacks verbs to show the labor involved: turning feeling into language is work, and turning language into public truth is risk. That risk is named with an unusually tender violence: "bruised or misunderstood". Bruising suggests contact, pressure, mishandling - the inevitable damage that happens when something soft meets a world that isn’t. Misunderstanding isn’t presented as a tragic exception; it’s the cover charge for being legible.

Context matters because Lorde’s stakes weren’t abstract. As a Black lesbian feminist poet moving through institutions built to discount her, she understood how silence is often marketed to marginalized people as "dignity" or "prudence" while functioning as erasure. The subtext is strategic: if power depends on your quiet, then speech becomes resistance, even when imperfect. The quote refuses the fantasy of flawless communication; it argues for testimony anyway. In Lorde’s universe, being bruised is not the opposite of being safe. It’s evidence you showed up.

Quote Details

Topic	Truth
Source	Audre Lorde, essay "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action", in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984).
Cite	Cite this Quote

More Quotes by Audre Add to List

About the Author

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 - November 17, 1992) was a Poet from USA.

38 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said"

Blaine Lee, Author

Blaine Lee

"I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it"

Lou Reed, Musician

"Before I speak, I have something important to say"

Groucho Marx, Comedian

Groucho Marx

"Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation"

Herman Melville, Novelist

Herman Melville

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said"

Peter Drucker, Businessman

Peter Drucker

"What is most important for me is to tell a story, not to prove a point"

Otto Friedrich, Writer

"Your voice is your tool and represents you. It's very important to have a good voice where you can be understood"

Jacqueline Bisset, Actress

"I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured"

Dean Acheson, Statesman

"The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious"

Andre Gide, Novelist

Andre Gide

"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out"

Stephen King, Author

Stephen King

"I think the number one thing that I find important is the importance of honesty with your friends and your parents, if you can be. But I think that telling people how you really feel, being who you truly are, being safe and taking care of yourself is the most important thing"

Emma Stone, Actress

Emma Stone

"Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too"

Howard Gardner, Psychologist

"Acting has to do with saying it as if you meant it, so for me the words are always very important. It's very important for me to know my lines, know them so well that I don't have to think about them"

Christopher Walken, Actor

"It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it"

Francis Beaumont, Playwright

"If you have something that you know is important to you and vital to you... then this will perhaps help people understand the importance of confronting it and being brave about it"

Tom Wilkinson, Actor

"It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom"

Dee Hock, Businessman

"Testifying has helped me understand that one individual's behavior and actions make a difference. That my actions are important to people other than myself"

Anita Hill, Professor

Anita Hill

"In quiet moments when you think about it, you recognize what is critically important in life and what isn't. Be wise and don't let good things crowd out those that are essential"

Richard G. Scott, Clergyman

"Members will hear me say repeatedly words are important; deeds are a reality"

Jon Corzine, Politician

"It's not important to me that people understand me"

Kate Bush, Musician

Kate Bush