Bell Hooks Quotes

I feel that my environment reflects my belief in the grace and art and elegance of living simply.
BELL HOOKS

Art Belief Elegance Environment Grace Live Reflection
If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.
BELL HOOKS

Children Deal Life Self Love Sound
We judge on the basis of what somebody looks like, skin color, whether we think they’re beautiful or not. That space on the Internet allows you to converse with somebody with none of those things involved.
BELL HOOKS

Beautiful Black Lives Matter Color Involvement Judgment Racism Skin Space Thinking
It’s in the act of having to do things that you don’t want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.
BELL HOOKS

Act Ego Learning Past
I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.
BELL HOOKS

Book Country Love Writing
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.
BELL HOOKS

Death Life Moments Reality Time
Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
BELL HOOKS

Book Ideas Life Transformation
As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.
BELL HOOKS

Class Dominate Feminism Race Realize Women
There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.
BELL HOOKS

Education Feminism Ideas Movement Understand
All the men I fall for seem to have a commitment problem.
BELL HOOKS

Commitment Fall Men Problem
If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice.
BELL HOOKS

Beloved Community Justice Stand
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.
BELL HOOKS

Action Difficult Fall Love Responsiblity
The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.
BELL HOOKS

Oppression Privilege Rage
The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.
BELL HOOKS

Control Force Hurt Loss Love Outside Pain Practice Risk Safety
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.
BELL HOOKS

Believe Commitment Each Other Endurance Health Impossible Individual Relationship Sustain
When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
BELL HOOKS

Bond Commitment Couple Maintain Pain Relationship Response
If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.
BELL HOOKS

Agency Beyond Existence Feeling Female Feminism Herself Power She Validation
The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.
BELL HOOKS

Art Function Imagination Inspirational Possible
To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.
BELL HOOKS

Beyond Imagination Possible Reality Vision
I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.
BELL HOOKS

Black Lives Matter People Self Esteem Serious
Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.
BELL HOOKS

Dominate Society Violence
Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified.
BELL HOOKS

Genuine Gratitude Instant Love Need Rare Space
All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity.
BELL HOOKS

Act Feminism Racism Silence
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.
BELL HOOKS

Creature Earth Fear Inspirational People Surround
Being oppressed means the absence of choices.
BELL HOOKS

Absence Choice Oppression
Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.
BELL HOOKS

Class Education Knowledge Money
Love is really more of an interactive process. It’s about what we do not just what we feel. It’s a verb, not a noun.
BELL HOOKS

Feeling Interactive Love Process

Famous People