Bell Hooks Quotes

A collection of quotes by Bell Hooks.

Bell Hooks is a prominent and influential African American scholar, cultural critic, and feminist theorist. Born on September 25, 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, her birth name is Gloria Jean Watkins, but she later adopted the pen name bell hooks, in honor of both her maternal great-grandmother and author Toni Morrison's novel "Sula."

Hooks has made significant contributions to various academic fields, focusing primarily on race, gender, and class issues. Her work challenges traditional power structures, advocating for intersectional feminism and social justice. Throughout her career, Hooks has published numerous books, essays, and articles that have become essential texts in feminist and cultural studies.

Some of her influential works include "Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism," "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center," and "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom." In her writings, Hooks critically examines the complex dynamics of race, gender, and liberation, inviting readers to question existing systems of oppression and envision alternatives.

Hooks has also been a professor at various universities, including Yale University, Oberlin College, and City College of New York. Her intellectual prowess and commitment to social justice have earned her widespread recognition and admiration. Bell Hooks continues to inspire and educate generations of scholars, activists, and readers through her thoughtful and groundbreaking contributions to feminist theory and cultural criticism.

There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of viole

There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether it's the mundane violence we do to our bodies by overeating toxic food or drink or the extreme violence of child abuse, domestic warfare, life-threatening poverty, addiction, or state terrorism.

schools for love do not exist. everyone assumes that we will

schools for love do not exist. everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively.despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love.those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. however this love often eludes us.

Love Relationships

I began writing a book on love because I felt that the Unite

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

Love

The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and

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 Fear Patriarchy Love Relationships

When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving

When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise. They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny.

Life Love Spirituality

I thought about how we need to make children feel that there

I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness.

Alone

Knowing hot to be solitary is central to the art of loving.

Knowing hot 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 Manners Self Confidence Self Care Awarness Giving Others Space

The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a c

The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success. - From (2003) Rock My Soul

Success Beauty

Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment

Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.

Love

When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw

When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.

Fear

feminism is for everybody

feminism is for everybody

Inspirational

We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so th

We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so that we can educate for critical consciousness, talking through the issues: how we acquire and spend money, how we feel about beauty, what the place of beauty is in our lives when we lack material privilege and even basic resources for living, the meaning and significance of luxury, and the politics of envy.

Beauty

To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but neve

To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.

Love Romance

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do

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

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though the

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

Women

Death is with you all the time you get deeper in it as you m

Death is with you all the time you get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it's not unfamiliar to you. It's always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.

Death

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talke

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.

Experience

I'm such a girl for the living room. I really like to stay i

I'm such a girl for the living room. I really like to stay in my nest and not move. I travel in my mind, and that that's a rigorous state of journeying for me. My body isn't that interested in moving from place to place.

Travel

The political core of any movement for freedom in the societ

The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.

Freedom

I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as bei

I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.

Fear