Audre Lorde Quotes

Let the will embrace the highest ideals freely and with infinite strength, but let action first take hold of what lies closest.

Weigh the meaning and look not at the words.

What counts isn't the frame, it's what you put in it.

Catch not at the shadow, and lose the substance.

When it comes down to, it's not about the form, it's about the content.

I flee from symbols. I think those who don't want to solve problems go to the symbols. I'm looking for content.

The important thing is, that I guess I don't spend any time thinking about what I am or what we do means. I spend my time doing it.

Hammer the iron that lies on your anvil instead of daydreaming about working silver.

Everybody is trying to make something real, something with a core of substance, and of course, an exciting action movie with a lot of terrific stuff and fantastic visuals and everything, but at the core of it, it's a movie with substance and something that is going to make people think.

When you blow away the foam, you get down to the real stuff.

Fortunately for mankind the brain in a life of action turns more to the matter in hand than to conjuring up the chances of the future.

True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words.

Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.

Ideas get substance and value not by being discussed but by being lived.

My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.

What is real is always worth it.

We must not waste life in devising means. It is better to plan less and do more.

Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.

The essence of the best thinking in the area of time management (practice planning) can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities

There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.

Spend your energy on things that make a difference.

DO IT RIGHT, DO IT WRONG, BUT DO IT. Squeeze your eyes shut and jump. Because a wonderful thing happens then. Your focus shifts from yourself, your nervousness, and your imagined inadequacies to the task at hand.

Language, in its origin and essence, is simply a system of signs or symbols that denote real occurrences or their echo in the human soul.

Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event,-poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.