Bell Hooks Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

11 Famous Quotes by Bell Hooks
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“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created.”
Paradise Quotes
“I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“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?”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“I feel enormously blessed to be a successful black woman writer in this culture, but I have found my small fame, such as it is, to be very isolating... because I think that especially for black women, the more we rise from the bottom, the more we move and journey, the more we are the targets of the most brutal and vicious attacks.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“. . .there is an element of Play that is almost ritualistic in Black folk life. It serves to mediate the tensions, stress, and pain of constant exploitation and oppression.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“I feel like there is always something trying to pull us back into sleep, that there is this sort of seductive quality in all the hedonistic pleasures that pull on us.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“I often find it easier to be teaching or giving to others, and often struggle with the place of my own pleasure and joy.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“I believe that this nation can only heal from the wounds of racism if we all begin to love blackness. And by that I don't mean that we love only that which is best within us, but that we're also able to love that which is faltering, which is wounded, which is contradictory, incomplete.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
“Secrets find a way out in sleep . . . It is the place where there is no pretense.”
Miscellaneous Quotes
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