All new learning looks at first like chaos.
ADRIENNE RICH
ADRIENNE RICH
More from Adrienne Rich
If poetry ceased to exist, it would immediately be reinvented on that same day.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich We’ve learned a lot from the great psychologists. Wilhelm Reich wrote about the relationship between fascism and sexual repression.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralysed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something – a great deal – to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler – for the liar – than it really is, or ought to be.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich if we are unaware that women even have a history–we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich The most important thing a woman can do for another is to illuminate her actual possibilities.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich When one woman tells her truth, it makes a space for other women to tell their truths.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time for years of missing each other.Yet only this odd warp in time tells me we’re not young.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say ‘I’; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparents’ memories on special occasions perhaps-no casual storytelling jogged by daily life.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich How shall we ever make the world intelligent of our movement? I do not think that the answer lies in trying to render feminism easy, popular, and instantly gratifying.
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich
Original quotes
From our community writers
You were fully clothed in lies, I was naked in truth. Still, when morning came It was I who survived the cold.
Obehi Vessel A.Obehi Vessel A. I loved you as Icarus loved the sun- too close, too much.
David JonesDavid Jones We attract who our souls need to grow.
Mark AnthonyMark Anthony You’re my bad habit, on this dark planet, light up my world like stars, now they’re ashes.
Chris AllchinChris Allchin Permanence is a wonderful magician. Now you see him, next he goes on to perform the greatest disappearing act of all time.
Hamilton K. AmadiHamilton K. Amadi Live to be happy not to impress.
Hayley EvansHayley Evans You shined your light on all the things I’ve been trying so hard to hide.
CindyCindy You are the love I could never escape not that I would ever want to.
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More on chaos
Stop looking for people who only want your beauty and turn away your chaos and darkness.
Nikita GillNikita Gill In a world where we are forced to conform to society, it is necessary to have personal chaos
Alun ArmstrongAlun Armstrong I will return to Libya and undertake my duties and obligations to bring equality within the chaos.
Al-Saadi GaddafiAl-Saadi Gaddafi Girls like her were born in a storm. They have lightning in their souls. Thunder in their hearts. And chaos in their bones.
Nikita GillNikita Gill Somedays, I’m an overflowing fountain, a chaotic ocean or an untamed river. But even on the hard days, kindness is a possibility I always choose.
Shruthi SagarShruthi Sagar According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.
AnonymousAnonymous The internet creates chaos and a dangerous kind of piracy but makes the viewer much more active and gives the voice to minority players.
Agnieszka HollandAgnieszka Holland The children are always the chief victims of social chaos.
Agnes Meyer DriscollAgnes Meyer Driscoll