Bell Hooks: Trending quotes (page 2)

“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.”

“If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.”

“There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.”

“All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity.”

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

“Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.”

“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.”

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

“I believe that it is impossible for two individuals not committed to their own and each other’s well being to sustain a healthy and enduring relationship.”

“There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.”

“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.”

“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”

“Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition.”

“There is light in darkness, you just have to find it.”

“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.”

“Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women…. they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.”

“If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.”

“Patriarchy has no gender.”

“Without justice there can be no love.”