Bell hooks Quotes

Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be in...

White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black men ma...

No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too m...

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

Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate...

She wanted me to remember that pleasure is political--for the capacity to relax and play renews the ...

True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it.

Her love of words is a private passion - one she would rather not share. In the house of her childho...

Writing is my passion. Words are the way to know ecstasy. Without them life is barren. The poet insi...

One of the major differences I see in the political climate today is that there is less collective s...

By the end of the seventies the feared yet desired black male body had become as objectified as it w...

Patriarchal hip-hop ushered in a world where black males could declare that they were “keeping it re...

Once upon a time black male “cool” was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships o...

When feminist women told the world that patriarchy promotes woman-hating, the response was that femi...

Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they chose to be int...

To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding m...

What the world needs now is liberated men who have the qualities Silverstein cites, men who are 'emp...

There seems to be a fear that if men are raised to be people of integrity, people who can love, they...

No matter that information abounds that lets the public know that gay males come from two-parent hom...

Men come to sex hoping that it will provide them with all of the emotional satisfaction that would h...

Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight -acting, pushy, p...

Often their rage erupts because they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subv...

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that ...

If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she i...

This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or...

I think the invitation offered the non-black reader is to join us in this expression of our familiar...

Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, fi...

Loneliness chosen is always preferable to loneliness imposed

I believe that it is impossible for two individuals not committed to their own and each other’s well...

With reciprocity all things do not need to be equal in order for acceptance and mutuality to thrive....

We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without st...

Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.

This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or...

Young girls often feel strong, courageous, highly creative, and powerful until they begin to receive...

Whether they regard themselves as pro- or antifeminist, most women want men to do more of the emotio...

Masses of the people think that feminism is always the only about women seeking to be equal to men. ...

I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy f...

There are writers who write for fame. And there are writers who write because we need to make sense ...

A distinction must be made between that writing which enables us to hold on to life even as we are c...

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

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

The confusion boys experience about their identity is heightened during adolescence. In many ways th...

When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through ac...

Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat o...

Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promo...

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

Significantly, in future feminist movement we will spend less time critiquing patriarchal marriage b...

When anyone thinks a woman who serves "gives 'cause that's what mothers or real women do," they deny...

I'm such a girl for the living room. I really like to stay in my nest and not move. I travel in my m...

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with oth...

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression. I liked this d...

Feminist thinking teaches us all, especially, how to love justice and freedom in ways that foster an...

Feminist politics is losing momentum because feminist movement has lost clear definitions. We have t...

Lifestyle feminism ushered in a notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there wer...

We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so that we can educate for critical conscious...

Sadly, at a time when so much sophisticated cultural criticism by hip intellectuals from diverse loc...

sometimes falling raincarries memories of betrayalthere in the woodswhere she was not meant to betoo...

Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but ...

When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our gro...

Most gay men are as sexist in their thinking as are heterosexuals. Their patriarchal thinking leads ...

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

Living simply makes loving simple.

Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been...

True love is a different story. When it happens, individuals usually feel in touch with each other's...

The idea of "common oppression" was a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true ...

feminism is for everybody

In retrospect, it is evident that highlighting abortion rather than reproductive rights as a whole r...

When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer...

We judge on the basis of what somebody looks like, skin color, whether we think they're beautiful or...

An often-repeated assertion in the body of film criticism I have written is the assertion that movie...

Again and again a man would tell me about early childhood feelings of emotional exuberance, of unrep...

Maintaining connections with family and community across class boundaries demands more than just sum...

The principle of equality, which is at the core of democratic values, has very little meaning in a w...

I have always been a flirt. My mother says whe I was a child, I used to stand outside the house and ...

Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about be...

To critique sexist images without offering alternatives is an incomplete intervention. Critique in a...

No wonder then that men who cared, who were open to change, often just gave up, falling back on the ...

The men in my life have always been the folks who are wary of using the word 'love' lightly. They ar...

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being,...

Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, ...

I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our h...

Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have ...

Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or any faith, shape and interpret religious tho...

Fame is fun, money is useful, celebrity can be exciting, but finally life is about optimal well-bein...

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the wor...

There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether i...

What's really sad is that so many young women between the ages of 16 and 25 are ignorant and they al...

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students...

To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone us...

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

Feminist movement is pro-family.

Most men and women born in the fifties or earlier were socialized to believe that marriages and/or c...

Describing our romantic longings in 'Life preserves,' therapist Harriet Lerner shares that most peop...

Many women do not join organized resis­tance against sexism precisely because sexism has not meant a...

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoi...

With heightened focus on the construction of woman as a "victim" of gender equality deserving repara...

Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with...

I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for...

We must dare to face the way in which patriarchal thinking blinds everyone so that we cannot see tha...

I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need...