Bell Hooks Quotes

I think it's crazy for us to think that people don't understand what's being foregrounded in their lives at a given point in time.

To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.

The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women's studies classes and said, "Black women have always worked."

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.

I get so tired of people acting like, you know, black men and women never help each other, never support each other.

I think part of Western metaphysical dualism is, we're always being asked to choose one over the other.

The greater our commitment, the more likely our love will last.

Clearly, commitment is a necessary component for creating loving relationships.

Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says we are never loved in a context where there is abuse.

My idea of a delicious time is to read a book that is wonderful. But the ruling passion of my life is being a seeker after truth and the divine.

Those of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic, know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and are drawn to other bearers of light. We are not alone.

I tell them that love is always there–that nothing can keep us from love if we dare to seek it and to treasure what we find.

…there is not a day of my life that I am not critiquing myself to see if my politics are borne out in the way that I live and the way that I talk and present myself.

Since men are not equals in white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal class structure, which men do women want to be equal to?

…move from emphasis on personal lifestyle issues toward creating political paradigms and radical models of social change that emphasize collective as well as individual change.

Society's collective fear of love must be faced if we are to lay claim to a love ethic that can inspire us and give us the courage to make necessary changes.

When anyone thinks a woman who serves "gives 'cause that's what mothers or real women do, " they deny her full humanity and thus fail to see the generosity inherent in her acts.

Feminist movement is pro-family.

We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts. Lovelessness torments.

When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights - that we respect and uphold their rights.

There can be no love without justice. Until we live in a culture that no only respects but also upholds basic civil rights for children, most children will not know love.

The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies wth a vision of social change which challenges class elitism.

I think the truth is that finding ourselves brings more excitement and well-being than anything romance has to offer, and somewhere we know that.

The feminist call was for women to embrace ways of seeing beauty and adorning ourselves that are healthy, life-affirming, and not overly time-time consuming.

[Our] struggle for liberation has significance only if it takes place within a feminist movement that has as its fundamental goal the liberation of all people.

Overall women in our society are forgetting the value and power of sisterhood. Renewed feminist movement must once again raise the banner high to proclaim anew "Sistehood is powerful.

A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving... There can be no love without justice.

First and foremost feminist movement urged females to no longer see ourselves and our bodies as the property of men.

Growing up is, at heart, the process of learning to take responsibility for whatever happens in your life. To choose growth is to embrace a love that heals.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance".

Those who choose to walk on love's path are well served if they have a guide. That guide can enable us to overcome fear if we trust that they will not lead us astray or abandon us along the way.

When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as an escape.

Do not expect to receive love from someone else you do not give yourself

Action, like a sacrament, is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power.

black identities are diverse and complex…

The principle of equality, which is at the core of democratic values, has very little meaning in a world in which global oligarchy is taking over.

It is this dependency that became, and is, the breeding ground for abuses of power.

Addiction makes love impossible.

The mutual practice of giving and receiving is an everyday ritual when we know true love.

When we are loving, we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.

The truth is, far too many people in our culture do not know what love is. And this not knowing feels like a terrible secret, a lack that we have to cover up.

Loneliness chosen is always preferable to loneliness imposed

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library..

When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat

Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.

An often-repeated assertion in the body of film criticism I have written is the assertion that movies do not just mirror the culture of any given time they also create it.

Certainly we can end racism with love. We can demand that the federal government change its emphasis on racial distinction.

I have always been a flirt. My mother says whe I was a child, I used to stand outside the house and just smile at everyone who walked by. Like, 'Please take me with you!'

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.