Bell hooks quotes - page 3

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it's to imagine what is possible. (Bell hooks)
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. View quote
Bell hooks
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. View quote
Bell hooks
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. View quote
Bell hooks
All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity. View quote
Bell hooks
When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment. View quote
Bell hooks
I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love. View quote
Bell hooks
To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds. View quote
Bell hooks
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. View quote
Bell hooks
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. View quote
Bell hooks
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)
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. View quote
Bell hooks
Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands. View quote
Bell hooks
The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin. View quote
Bell hooks
When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture. View quote
Bell hooks
Patriarchy has no gender. View quote
Bell hooks
feminism is for everybody. View quote
Bell hooks
Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart. View quote
Bell hooks
If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue. View quote
Bell hooks
Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. View quote
Bell hooks
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)
Changing how we see images is clearly one way to change the world. View quote
Bell hooks
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. View quote
Bell hooks
What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy. View quote
Bell hooks
We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent. View quote
Bell hooks