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Bell Hooks Quotes - Page 7

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

Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And

Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us.

Powerful, Writing, Thinking

Interview with Pierce Freelon, blackademics.org. October, 2006.

The world would be a paradise of peace and justice if global citizens shared a common definition of love which would guide our thoughts and action.

Justice, Definitions, Would Be

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

I would also say that, in practice, many more Americans are anarchists than would ever use that term.

Practice, Use, Anarchist

"How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks". Interview with Randy Lowens, nefac.net. March 15, 2012.

If we are ever to construct a feminist movement that is not based on the premise that men and women are always at war with one another, then we must be willing to acknowledge the appropriateness of complex critical responses to writing by men even if it is sexist. Clearly women can learn from writers whose work is sexist, even be inspired by it, because sexism may be simply one dimension of that work. Concurrently fiercely critiquing the sexism does not mean that one does not value the work.

War, Writing, Mean

bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.87, Routledge

I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.

Moving On, Book, Writing

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

It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.

White, People, Focus

"Ain't I a Woman?". Book by Gloria Jean Watkins, 1981.

The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.

Acceptance, Bad Ass, Feminist

bell hooks (2014). “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism”, p.157, Routledge

Think of all the women you know who will not allow themselves to be seen without makeup. I often wonder how they feel about themselves at night when they are climbing into bed with intimate partners. Are they overwhelmed with secret shame that someone sees them as they really are? Or do they sleep with rage that who they really are can be celebrated or cared for only in secret?

Sleep, Makeup, Night

Since the notion that we should all forsake attachment to race and/or cultural identity and be “just humans” within the framework of white supremacy has usually meant that subordinate groups must surrender their identities, beliefs, values, and assimilate by adopting the values and beliefs of privileged-class whites, rather than promoting racial harmony this thinking has created a fierce cultural protectionism.

Thinking, Race, Attachment

No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.

Women, Writing, Black

All efforts at self-transformation challenge us to engage in on-going, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, and about how we live in the world. This individual commitment, when coupled with engagement in collective discussion, provides a space for critical feedback which strengthens our efforts to change and make ourselves anew.

Commitment, Reflection, Self

... we need to interrogate "reverence," for idolization can be another way one is objectified and not really taken seriously.

Taken, Needs, Way

bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.109, Routledge

Lying has become so much the accepted norm that people lie even when it would be simpler to tell the truth.

Lying, People, Would Be

as females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love; most of us were and are slaves of longing-- yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves

Female, Culture, Longing

I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.

Support, Style, Contemplation

Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.

Men, Space, Feminist

bell hooks (2012). “Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations”, p.95, Routledge

In our young minds houses belonged to women were their special domain, not as property, but as places where all that truly mattered in life took place - the warmth and comfort of shelter, the feeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our souls. There we learned dignity, integrity of being; there we learned to have faith. The folks who made this life possible, who were our primary guides and teachers, were black women.

Teacher, Women, Integrity

bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.55, Routledge

Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.

Different, Littles, Arena

"Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center". Book by Bell Hooks, 1984.

. . . no Black woman can become an intellectual without decolonizing her mind.

Black, Intellectual, Mind

bell hooks, Cornel West (2016). “Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life”, p.196, Routledge

The notion that black folks have nothing to learn from scholarship that may reflect racial or racist biases is dangerous. It promotes closed-mindedness and a narrow understanding of knowledge to hold that "race" is such an overwhelming concept that it negates the validity of any insights contained in a work that may have some racist or sexist aspects.

Race, Racism, Understanding

Fame is fun, money is useful, celebrity can be exciting, but finally life is about optimal well-being and how we achieve that in dominator culture, in a greedy culture, in a culture that uses so much of the world’s resources. How do men and women, boys and girls, live lives of compassion, justice and love? And I think that’s the visionary challenge for feminism and all other progressive movements for social change.

Girl, Fun, Live Life

In order for me to engage in a revolutionary struggle for collective Black self-determination, I have to engage feminism because that becomes the vehicle by which I project myself as a female into the heart of the struggle, but the heart of the struggle does not begin with feminism. It begins with an understanding of domination and with a critique of domination in all its forms.

Determination, Struggle, Heart

Source: espressostalinist.com

The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know that just is not true.

Men, Feels, Maleness

Bell Hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, Washington Square Pr

I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.

Solitude, Black, Males

"“There’s No Place to Go But Up” — Bell Hooks and Maya Angelou in conversation". Interview with Melvin McLeod, www.lionsroar.com. January 1, 1998.

I think inequality is in our minds. I think this is what we learn through practice... The bridge of illusion must be shattered in order for a real bridge to be constructed. One of the things we learn is that inequality is an illusion.

Real, Thinking, Order

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

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