Bell hooks quotes

Born
September 25, 1952 Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

Occupation
Author.

Bell hooks is an American author, feminist, and social activist. The name “bell hooks” is derived from that of her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.

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

It really fascinates me what white people are allowed to write about.
– Bell hooks

Certainly we can end racism with love. We can demand that the federal government change its emphasis on racial distinction.
– Bell hooks

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

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.
– Bell hooks

I love my family, even as I critique their dysfunctionalities.
– Bell hooks

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.
– Bell hooks

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

If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.
– Bell hooks

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

You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.
– Bell hooks

I don’t think you can hate anything that you know intimately. There is no fine line separating love from hate because there’s a deep chasm separating love from hate.
– Bell hooks

Every terrorist regime in the world uses isolation to break people’s spirits.
– Bell hooks

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

I think I was always obsessed with esthetics.
– Bell hooks

All the men I fall for seem to have a commitment problem.
– Bell hooks

In general, the mass media tell us that black people are not loving, that our lives are so fraught with violence and aggression that we have no time to love.
– Bell hooks

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

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

Until the legacy of remembered and reenacted trauma is taken seriously, black America cannot heal.
– Bell hooks

The people I love, I’m committed to loving for the rest of my life.
– Bell hooks

I told my parents when I was 12 I’d be a writer.
– Bell hooks

Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.
– Bell hooks

Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.
– Bell hooks

Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims.
– Bell hooks

Whenever women struggle with breast cancer and face better care than ever, that’s feminism.
– Bell hooks

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

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

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

I’ve written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.
– Bell hooks

An often-repeated assertion in the body of film criticism I have written is the assertion that movies do not just mirror the culture of any given time; they also create it.
– Bell hooks

Live simply so that others may simply live.
– Bell hooks

These days I wonder more and more why people are pessimistic when American history actually supports optimism.
– Bell hooks

The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.
– Bell hooks