Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press Feminist Series)

Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures.

What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope.

I work for a time when women with women, women with men, men with men, all share the work of a world that does not barter bread or self for obedience, nor beauty, nor love.

That’s the only thing I’ve had to fight with, my whole life, preserving my perceptions of how things are, and later, learning how to accept and correct at the same time.

we all shared a war against the tyrannies of silence.

What understanding begins to do is to make knowledge available for use, and that’s the urgency, that’s the push, that’s the drive.

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Because we cannot fight old power in old power terms only. The only way we can do it is by creating another whole structure that touches every aspect of our existence, at the same time as we are resisting.

Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees.