65 bell hooks Quotes On Success In Life

Gloria Jean Watkins better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name “bell hooks” is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. These bell hooks quotes will motivate you.

Best bell hooks Quotes

1. “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.” ~ bell hooks
2. “The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility, we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.” ~ bell hooks
3. “Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power – not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.” ~ bell hooks

4. “What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe.” ~ Bell Hooks

5. “I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer…education as the practice of freedom…. education that connects the will to know with the will to become. Learning is a place where paradise can be created.” ~ bell hooks , bell hooks quotes on education
6. “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.” ~ bell hooks
7. “To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.” ~ bell hooks
8. “Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.” ~ bell hooks
9. “Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.” ~ bell hooks

10. “What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.” ~ bell hooks

11. “[O]ne of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.” ~ bell hooks
12. “I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions – a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom.” ~ bell hooks
13. “My hope emerges from those places of struggle where I witness individuals positively transforming their lives and the world around them. Educating is a vocation rooted in hopefulness. As teachers we believe that learning is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know.” ~ bell hooks
14. “The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.” ~ bell hooks

15. “The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.” ~ bell hooks

16. “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. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.” ~ bell hooks
17. “All of us in the academy and in the culture as a whole are called to renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions-and society-so that the way we live, teach, and work can reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our passion for justice, and our love of freedom.” ~ bell hooks
18. “True resistance begins with people confronting pain… and wanting to do something to change it.” ~ bell hooks
19. “As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.” ~ bell hooks

20. “If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice.” ~ bell hooks

21. “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.” ~ bell hooks
22. “For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?” ~ bell hooks
23. “Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.” ~ bell hooks

24. “Because we have learned to believe negativity is more realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice.” ~ bell hooks

25. “The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.” ~ bell hooks
26. “The intellectual tradition of the West is very individualistic. It’s not community-based. The intellectual is often thought of as a person who is alone and cut off from the world. So I have had to practice being willing to leave the space of my study to be in community, to work in community, and to be changed by community.” ~ bell hooks
27. “In an ideal world, we would all learn in childhood to love ourselves. We would grow, being secure in our worth and value, spreading love wherever we went, letting our light shine. If we did not learn self-love in our youth, there is still hope. 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 and call us back to the first memory of being the life force inside a dark place waiting to be born – waiting to see the light.” ~ bell hooks
28. “I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.” ~ bell hooks

29. “You are not going to destroy this imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy by creating your own version of it.” ~ bell hooks

30. “Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.” ~ bell hooks , bell hooks quotes on love
31. “Patriarchy, like any system of domination (for example, racism), relies on socializing everyone to believe that in all human relations there is an inferior and a superior party, one person is strong, the other weak, and that it is therefore natural for the powerful to rule over the powerless. To those who support patriarchal thinking, maintaining power and control is acceptable by whatever means.” ~ bell hooks
32. “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.” ~ bell hooks
33. “The true teacher is within us. A good teacher is someone who can help you to go back and touch the true teacher within because you already have the insight within you.” ~ bell hooks

34. “The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom.” ~ Bell Hooks

35. “If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.” ~ bell hooks
36. “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.” ~ bell hooks
37. “It is important and vital is to keep that education for critical consciousness around intersectionalities, so that people are able to not focus on one thing and blame one group, but be able to look holistically at the way intersectionality informs all of us: whiteness, gender, sexual preferences, etc. Only then can we have a realistic handle on the political and cultural world we live within.” ~ bell hooks

38. “Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.” ~ bell hooks

39. “If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to privilege.” ~ bell hooks
40. “Feminist politics aims to end domination, to free us to be who we are – to live lives where we love justice, where we can live in peace. Feminism is for everybody.” ~ bell hooks
41. “One of the things that we must do as teachers is twirl around and around, and find out what works with the situation that we’re in. Our models might not work. And that twirling, changing, is part of the empowerment.” ~ bell hooks
42. “Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.” ~ bell hooks

43. “Living simply makes loving simple.” ~ bell hooks

44. “Of all the definitions of love that abound in our universe, a special favorite of mine is… “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”” ~ bell hooks
45. “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.” Or 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.” ~ bell hooks
46. “Without justice there can be no love.” ~ bell hooks
47. “Our freedom is sweet. It will be sweeter when we are all free.” ~ bell hooks

48. “I think our culture doesn’t recognize passion because real passion has the power to disrupt boundaries.” ~ bell hooks

49. “A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers – the experience of knowing we always belong.” ~ bell hooks
50. “Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat of love.” ~ bell hooks
51. “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.’ Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.” ~bell hooks

52. “..Critically intervene in a way that challenges and changes.” ~ bell hooks

53. “Most of us did not learn when we were young that our capacity to be self-loving would be shaped by the work we do and whether that work enhances our well-being.” ~ bell hooks
54. “We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic.” ~ bell hooks

55. “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

56. “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
57. “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.” ~ bell hooks

58. “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.” ~ bell hooks

59. “In 2014, when Hillary Clinton was not yet running for president, I stated that I was not in agreement with her politics. More recently, when asked my thoughts about Hillary Clinton during a public conversation with Gloria Steinem, I stated, “she embodies the very best of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t vote for her.”” ~ bell hooks
60. “…“white supremacy” is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term “internalized racism”- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term “white supremacy” enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise “white supremacist control” over other black people.” ~ bell hooks
61. “No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.” ~ bell hooks , bell hooks quotes on identity

62. “When men and women punish each other for truth-telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better.” ~ bell hooks

63. “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients – care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.” ~ bell hooks
64. “Loving friendships provide us with a space to experience the joy of community in a relationship where we learn to process all our issues, to cope with differences and conflict while staying connected.” ~ bell hooks
65. “Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.” ~ bell hooks

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