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Bell Hooks Quotes - Page 2

All Quotes Abuse Acceptance Anarchy Art Awareness Belief Challenges Childhood Children Choices Commitment Community Compassion Country Criticism Culture Desire Diversity Effort Fate Feelings Feminism Focus Gender Giving Growth Heart Home Hurt Identity Imagination Integrity Justice Language Life Lifetime Loss Love Lying Oppression Pain Passion Patriarchy Prejudice Privacy Racism Rage Reading Reality Romantic Love School Self Esteem Self Love Sexism Shame Silence Sleep Soul Stress Struggle Students Suffering Teaching Understanding Vision War Writing

Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.

Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.

Honesty, Insightful, Foundation

"Fools for love" by Bell Hooks, www.theguardian.com. February 14, 2000.

In an ideal world we would all learn in childhood to love ourselves. We would grow, being secure in our worth and value, spreading love wherever we went, letting our light shine. If we did not learn self-love in our youth, there is still hope. The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken and call us back to the first memory of being the life force inside a dark place waiting to be born - waiting to see the light.

Memories, Heart, Dark

If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to privilege.

Beloved Community, Differences, Justice

If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice.

Beloved Community, Justice, Want

One of the things that we must do as teachers is twirl around and around, and find out what works with the situation that we're in. Our models might not work. And that twirling, changing, is part of the empowerment.

Teacher, Empowerment, Might

I think our culture doesn't recognize passion, because real passion has the power to disrupt boundaries.

Real, Passion, Thinking

Bell Hooks (1996). “Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies”, p.122, Psychology Press

Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.

Struggle, Political, Despair

To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.

Community, Way, Awareness

bell hooks (2013). “Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope”, p.36, Routledge

As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

Sisterhood, Race, Class

bell hooks (2014). “Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics”, p.27, Routledge

I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.

Love, Order, Differences

Bell Hooks (1996). “Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies”, p.122, Psychology Press

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

Forgiveness, Believe, Compassion

Because we have learned to believe negativity is more realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice.

Real, Believe, Voice

The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.

Girl, Children, Order

Patriarchy, like any system of domination (for example, racism), relies on socializing everyone to believe that in all human relations there is an inferior and a superior party, one person is strong, the other weak, and that it is therefore natural for the powerful to rule over the powerless. To those who support patriarchal thinking, maintaining power and control is acceptable by whatever means.

Strong, Powerful, Party

We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic.

Media, White, Culture

bell hooks, Amalia Mesa-Bains (2017). “Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism”, p.66, Routledge

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

Library, United States, Institutions

bell hooks (2003). “Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

Love is an action, never simply a feeling.

Love Is, Feelings, Action

If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.

Struggle, Thinking, Race

"Women’s Rights and Human Rights" by Judi Jennings, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 26, 2009.

Only grown-ups think that the things children say come out of nowhere. We know they come from the deepest parts of ourselves.

Children, Thinking, Knows

You are not going to destroy this imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy by creating your own version of it.

White, Creating, Capitalist

"bell hooks on Beyoncé: She Is a ‘Terrorist’ Because of Her ‘Impact On Young Girls’" by Britni Danielle, clutchmagonline.com. May 8, 2014.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

Love, Life, Meaningful

"Time Spent in a Psych Ward" by Erin Nugent, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 10, 2015.

Loving friendships provide us with a space to experience the joy of community in a relationship where we learn to process all our issues, to cope with differences and conflict while staying connected.

Relationship, Differences, Issues

Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.

Children, Passion, Learning

bell hooks (2013). “Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom”, p.13, Routledge

The intellectual tradition of the West is very individualistic. It's not community-based. The intellectual is often thought of as a person who is alone and cut off from the world. So I have had to practice being willing to leave the space of my study to be in community, to work in community, and to be changed by community.

Cutting, Practice, Space

"Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh". www.lionsroar.com. March 24, 2017.

Being oppressed means the absence of choices

Mean, Choices, Absence

bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.22, Routledge

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