Quotes from bell hooks

Keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy. Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism. And lies strengthen the world of predatory advertising.

Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism.

To critique sexist images without offering alternatives is an incomplete intervention. Critique in and of itself does not lead to change.

Valuing ourselves rightly means we understand love to be the only foundation of being that will sustain us in both times of lack and times of plenty

By championing hedonistic consumerism and encouraging individuals of all classes to believe that ownership of a particular object mediated the realities of class, mass media created a new image of the rich.

ours is a culture that does not love children, that continues to see children as the property of parents to do with as they will.

Seeking to heal the wounds inflicted by patriarchy, we have to go to the source. We have to look at males directly, eye to eye, and speak the truth that the time has come for males to have a revolution of values. We cannot turn our hearts from boys and men, then ponder why the politics of war continues to shape our national policy and our intimate romantic lives.

We refuse to allow either/or thinking to cloud our judgment. We embrace the logic of both/and. We acknowledge the limits of what we know.

From the onset, reformist white women with class privilege were well aware that the power and freedom they wanted was the freedom they perceived men of their class enjoying.

The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be.

To take the inherent positive sexuality of males and turn it into violence is the patriarchal crime that is perpetuated against the male body, a crime that masses of men have yet to possess the strength to report.

Solidarity is not the same as support. To experience solidarity, we must have a community of interests, shared beliefs and goals around which to unite, to build Sisterhood. Support can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment.

Showing aggression is the simplest way to assert patriarchal manhood. Men of all classes know this. As a consequence, all men living in a culture of violence must demonstrate at some point in their lives that they are capable of being violent.

The message received from the mass media is that knowledge makes love less compelling; that it is ignorance that gives love its erotic and transgressive edge.

The history of colonization, imperialism is a record of betrayal, of lies, and deceits. The demand for that which is real is a demand for reparation, for transformation. In resistance, the exploited, the oppressed work to expose the false reality - to reclaim and recover ourselves.

if we think of the natural landscapes that surround us as simply, blank slates, existing for humans to act upon them according to our will then we cannot exist in life sustaining harmony with the earth.

There is only one emotion that patriarchy values when expressed by men; that emotion is anger. Real men get mad.

we must consistently challenge dehumanizing public representations of poverty and the poor. Restoring to our nation the understanding that people can be materially poor yet have abundant lives rich in engagement with nature, with local culture, with spiritual values is essential to any progressive struggle to halt mountaintop removal

From childhood on, I found many of my angels in favorite authors, writers who created books that enabled me to understand life with greater complexity. These works opened my heart to compassion, forgiveness, and understanding.

No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively. Yet parents do this all the time in our culture. Children are told that they are loved even though they are being abused.

the poems repeat sorrow sounds, connecting the pain of a historical Kentucky landscape ravaged by war and all human conditions that are like war.

I have had the pain of fragmentation deeply impressed upon my consciousness. The alienation felt by many people who are concerned about domination – the struggle we have even to make of our words a language that can be shared, understood.

While the will to love is present in very young children, they still need guidance in the ways of love.

Fixating on wants and needs, which consumerism encourages us to do, promotes a psychological state of endless craving.