Best Bell Hooks Quotes- One of the very strong personalities when it comes to issues of feminism is bell hooks. Bell hooks is a scholar, an author and a radical feminist. She is unique in her ways and thinking so much that she preferred to have her name written in lower case. In this article, we have listed several quotes by bell hooks on love, feminism, discrimination, etc.
Bell Hooks Quotes on Love
Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love…When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist.
Love as ‘the will to extend one’s self for the the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.’ Love is as love does. Love is an act of will–namely, both an intention and an action.
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. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling
When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth. It’s not what you do but how you do it.
Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure….This bleak picture in no way alters the nature of our longing. We still hope that love will prevail. We still believe in love’s promise.
There can be no love without justice…abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. It is a testimony to the failure of loving practice that abuse is happening in the first place.
Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give to yourself…The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken.
When we can see ourselves as we truly are and accept ourselves, we build the necessary foundation for self-love…whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment.Self love cannot flourish in isolation
To open our hearts more fully to love’s power and grace we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice…We yearn to to end the lovelessness that is so pervasive in our society
Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak
Bell Hooks Quotes on Feminism
When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment
When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called ‘cathexis’
Feminist thinking teaches us all, especially, how to love justice and freedom in ways that foster and affirm life.
Power feminism is just another scam in which women get to play patriarchs and pretend that the power we seek and gain liberates us
Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.
The soul of our politics is the commitment to ending domination.
Masses of the people think that feminism is always the only about women seeking to be equal to men. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.
One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am.
Feminism as a theoretical enterprise is approached differently by Black women depending on where we are. There are more reformist Black women who tend to use the phrase “Black feminism
How different things might be if, rather than saying “I think I’m in love,” we were saying “I’ve connected with someone in a way that makes me think I’m on the way to knowing love
To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us.
Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression
The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.
I his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us ‘confuse cathecting with loving.’ We all know how often individuals of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting of neglecting them. Since their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love
If instead of saying ‘I am in love’ we say ‘I am loving’ or ‘I will love.’ Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change if we do not change our language.
In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family
Women will only be truly sexually liberated when we arrive at a place where we can see ourselves as having sexual value and agency irrespective of whether of not we are the objects of male desire
Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction.
In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard.
We knew that there could be no real sisterhood between white women and women of color if white women were not able to divest of white supremacy, if feminist movement were not fundamentally anti-racist
Bell Hook Quotes on Discrimination
If Black women stand strong and our commitment is to ending domination I know that I’m supporting Black males, Black children male and female Black elderly because the bottom line is the struggle to end domination in all its forms
Whether we’re talking about race or gender or class, popular culture is where the pedagogy is, it’s where the learning is
It’s really important to have life strategies and part of that is sort of knowing where you want to go so you can have a map that helps you to get there. And the traditional way tells us oh we get into school and someone else advises us, helps us, but that often does not work for African Americans female and male. Because what works for the dominant culture often does not work for us.
Often in my lectures when I use the phrase “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe our nation’s political system, audiences laugh. No one has ever explained why accurately naming this system is funny. The laughter is itself a weapon of patriarchal terrorism
Factual Bell Hooks Quotes
Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively
When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called ‘cathexis’
But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. 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.
When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.
It is silly, isn’t it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim “You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself” made clear sense. And I add, “Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.
Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment…‘dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love — which is to transform us.
By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult.
When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.
A huge majority of parents use some form of physical or verbal aggression against children. Since women remain the primary caretakers of children, the facts confirm the reality that given a hierarchal system in a culture of domination which empowers females (like the parent-child relationship) all too often they use coercive force to maintain dominance.”
All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.
In a culture of domination everyone is socialized to see violence as an acceptable means of social control.
Inspiring Bell Hook Quotes
Our hearts connect with lots of folks in a lifetime but most of us will go to our graves with no experience of true love.
The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.
True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved
Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. ”
To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients – care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication
Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand
About Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks is the pen name for Gloria Gean Watkins, an author, activist and a professor. Gloria was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Most of her writings are centered around capitalism, classism, feminism and genders and intersectionality of race.
Bell Hooks has published over 30 books in different subject areas. She has also taught in different colleges including the University of Southern California and Yale University.
Must-Read Books Of bell hooks
- Aint a woman
- Feminism is for everybody
- Communion: the female search for love
- Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
- Teaching to transgression
- The will to change
- All about love: new vision
- Salvation: Black people & Masculinity
- We Real cool: Black men & Masculinity
- Bone Black
- Where we stand
The will to change: In this book, hooks addresses men of all ages , ethnicity, background and sexual orientation. Different questions centering around love and masculinity were answered.
Communion: The book was written as a guide on how to search for love. The right kind of love that will give them liberty.
All about love: This is one of the most popular book by hooks. Here, she gives the true definition of love. She explained that with the right understanding of love, then societal differences can be better handled
Feminism for everybody: Here, hooks argues why feminism is what everyone should embrace. She also explains the steps communities can take so that feminism can be accepted as a part of their culture.
Where we stand : In this book, hooks analyzes the intersectionality of class and race and how the society can be free of systemic boundaries.
Bone Black: Hooks delve a bit into her life. How she started her journey from a little girl to a matured woman. How she started her career as a writer in a society that is full of gender discrimination.
Killing rage: The book talks about the reality of systematic racism in the United States.
Teaching to transgress: In this book, hooks talk about the need for teachers to guide their students in achieving freedom by rejecting racial, sexual and other forms of discrimination.
Feminist Theory: The book talked about the absence of intersectionality in the feminist movement.
Aint I a woman: Here hook analyzes the black womanhood including the factors facing such women apart from sexist and racist stereotypes.
Last Word
Bell hooks was a passionate writer and a serious radical when it comes to matters of feminism. Eventhough she is no more, her works live on.
Frequently Asked Questions
She was famous as a writer on topics such as race, class and feminism
It was reported that bell hooks died of end-stage renal failure.
It means prejudice or discrimination that is based on gender most especially against girls and women.
Reference
- www. bookroo. com – Bell Hooks Quotes
- www. mijente. Net – 10 Powerful quotes from Bell Hooks’ “All about Love”
- www. usatoday.com – Living simply makes loving simple: bell hooks’ quotes on love, relationships and feminism
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