27 Quotes by Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist, and feminist activist whose work explored themes of social justice, gender inequality, and the complexities of human relationships. Her poetry often combined personal experiences with broader political issues, such as the Vietnam War, civil rights, and the feminist movement. Rich's writing was celebrated for its raw emotional power and its ability to articulate the struggles of marginalized communities. She received numerous awards and honors for her contributions to literature and activism, including the National Book Award, the MacArthur Genius Grant, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. Rich's legacy continues to inspire and influence contemporary writers and activists around the world. (Bio)
Adrienne Rich Quotes
If our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative. (Meaning)
Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.
Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.
The beauty of darknessis how it lets you see.
The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.
When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.
An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.
All new learning looks at first like chaos.
The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits. The most important thing a woman can do for another is to illuminate her actual possibilities.
We must use what we have to invent what we desire.
The will to change begins in the body, not in the mind.
We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.
Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality.
I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something - a great deal - to do with how we live our lives.
Poetry can open locked chambers of possibiity, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire.
It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.
Lying is done with words and also with silence.
If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.
Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.
Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
An honorable human relationship ... is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.
The moment of change is the only poem. (Meaning)
― Adrienne Rich Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
