Bell Hooks Quotes

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?
Bell Hooks

Time, Humanity, Enough

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

Moving, Past, Self

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

Life, Ignorance, Someone

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

Love, Moving, Book

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

Life, Words, Service

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

Fear, Earth, Draw

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.
Bell Hooks

Love, Fear, Thinking

No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.
Bell Hooks

Women, Men, Focus

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

Freedom, Society, Political

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

Life, Time, Death

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.
Bell Hooks

Travel, Girl, Mind

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
Bell Hooks

Through, Books, Ideas

But 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

Love, Process, Verb

Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.
Bell Hooks

Love, Time, Knowing

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

Art, Living, Grace

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.
Bell Hooks

Black, Seriously

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.
Bell Hooks

Alone, Children, Thought

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.
Bell Hooks

Women, Black, Read

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.
Bell Hooks

Experience, Wisdom, Spiritual

Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.
Bell Hooks

Art, Thinking, Small

I feel like there is always something trying to pull us back into sleep, that there is this sort of seductive quality in all the hedonistic pleasures that pull on us.
Bell Hooks

Sleep, Trying, Quality

I get so tired of people acting like, you know, black men and women never help each other, never support each other.
Bell Hooks

Women, Men, Tired

I think I was always obsessed with esthetics.
Bell Hooks

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

Health, Women, Black

I think the Women's movement has had a major impact on everybody's lives in our nation and in the world as a whole.
Bell Hooks

Women, Whole, Nation

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Critic

Born: September 25, 1952

Links

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Cite this Page: Citation

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