Bell hooks Quotes

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible.

Love is an action, never simply a feeling.

The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression.

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart.

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

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

The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.

The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created.

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.

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.

Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is rather an ever-increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth.

To truly love ourselves, we must challenge our beliefs that we need to be different or better.

To be ‘woman’ in America… means living at the breaches, always falling short of the mark.

Education as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn.

I love that we can share our pain and that we have moments of joy too.

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible.

Writing is my passion… I was not sent to the Earth to write feminist theory.

When love is the ground we move from in our interactions, we empower ourselves to build the world anew.

Feminism is a process, not a destination.

Revolutionary feminist transformation cannot be achieved through individual discipline, seduction, or quiet persuasion.

Domination and subordination are not inherent in particular identities, but are products of a social system that privileges certain identities.

To critique capitalism in its current form is not anti-business; it is pro-humanity.

The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.

Theory, like love, can be a substance to guide our practice, to enhance our lives.

Without solidarity, our capacity to perpetuate the violence of imperialist, racist, sexist, heterosexist, and class structure will go unabated.

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys.

The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.

Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.

Confronting a culture obsessed with winning, too often we forget that defeat also has its lessons to teach.

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.

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible.

The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression.

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart.

Writing in my notebook, I am never lonely.

Destroying anything, even if it is destroying something we despise, simply breeds more of the same.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

There can be no transformation without representation.

We belong to a culture that celebrates the self-care of the privileged, while it blames the oppressed for their own distress.

Institutionalized domination cannot be fought solely in the halls of academia or in the streets of protest. It must also be fought in the home, in the mind, and in the heart.

It is in collectives that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.

Oppression is not a way of life; it is the violation of life.

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit.

We need to create spaces that enable us to function as advocates and activists who resist racist, sexist, and heterosexist oppression, while nurturing our well-being and spiritual growth.

One of the biggest lies in our culture is that all men are like Harvey Weinstein.

Solidarity is based on the principle that we are willing to put ourselves at risk to protect each other.

My hope has always been that people with a shared vision for a world free of domination would come to see the growth of feminist mass movement as a hope, a truly liberatory tradition.

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Feminism is a transformational political practice that seeks to create a world without dominance.

Engaging in social justice work, radically and fiercely committed to eradicating domination, is not just an act of resisting oppressive systems but is a spiritual practice.