Quotes from bell hooks

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

In this culture, the phrase 'black woman' is not synonymous with 'tender,' or 'gentle.' It's as if those words couldn't possibly speak to the reality of black females.

It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.

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

There is a lushness to how my mind works.

I think it's crazy for us to think that people don't understand what's being foregrounded in their lives at a given point in time.

When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom.

To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility.

Without justice there can be no love.

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.

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

What's really sad is that so many young women between the ages of 16 and 25 are ignorant and they already believe that women get the same pay as men. They don't even really understand that equality hasn't happened with the pay force.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom...

When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.