Bell Hooks quotes: the author’s pen name’s, um, best stuff.
“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.”
“Open your heart to life’s most difficult challenges. The source of all wakefulness, the source of all kindness and compassion, the source of all wisdom, is in each second of time. Anything that has us looking ahead is missing the point.”
“It’s in the act of having to do things that you don’t want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.”
“In my work I constantly say, this is how I fell and this is how I was able to rise. It may be important that you fall. Life is not over. Just don’t let defeat defeat you. See where you are, and then forgive yourself, and get up.”
“What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe.”
“To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.”
“What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.”
“There is no change without contemplation.”
“People with healthy self-esteem do not need to create pretend identities.”
“Living consciously is living with a core of healthy self-esteem. You will face reality, you will not delude yourself.”
“The challenge these days, is to be somewhere, to belong to some particular place, invest oneself in it, draw strength and courage from it, to dwell in a community.”
“There are times when personal experience keeps us from reaching the mountain top and so we let it go because the weight of it is too heavy. And sometimes the mountain top is difficult to reach with all our resources, factual and confessional, so we are just there, collectively grasping, feeling the limitations of knowledge, longing together, yearning for a way to reach that highest point. Even this yearning is a way to know.”
“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.”
“We judge on the basis of what somebody looks like, skin color, whether we think they’re beautiful or not. That space on the internet allows you to converse with somebody with none of those things involved.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.”
“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.”
“I think we have to choose, what are the issues that really matter? We have to trust that.”
“Critically intervene in a way that challenges and changes.”
“Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.”
“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.”
“Learning is a place where paradise can be created.”
“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.”
“To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.”
“Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.”
“Writing is my passion. It is a way to experience the ecstatic. The root understanding of the word ecstasy—’to stand outside’—comes to me in those moments when I am immersed so deeply in the act of thinking and writing that everything else, even flesh, falls away.”
“I have created a lifestyle that supports contemplation, service to words. My work is mostly influenced by the concrete circumstances of our daily lives.”
“My focus has always been on the work—that work being critical thinking and writing. I am always doing that. That’s where I am, wherever I am. Critical thinking and writing as my heartbeat.”
“Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.”
“To love somebody is not just a strong feeling; it’s a decision, it’s a judgement, it’s a promise.”
“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.”
“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. Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.”
“Love is an action, never simply a feeling. Living simply makes loving simple.”
“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.”
“If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.”
“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.”
“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself.”
“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.”
“Love is our hope and salvation.”
“There is light in darkness, you just have to find it.”
“True resistance begins with people confronting pain, and wanting to do something to change it.”
“I think stress is anything going on in our lives that impinges on our capacity to have optimum well-being.”
“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.”
“It’s interesting, the way in which one has to balance life, because you have to know when to let go and when to pull back.”
“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.”
“My idea of a delicious time is to read a book that is wonderful. But the ruling passion of my life is being a seeker after truth and the divine.”
“I am passionate about everything in my life—first and foremost, passionate about ideas.”
“I’m lucky. I think it’s good that I have a body of work that addresses different things in different ways.”
“When life is happening, design has meaning, and every design we encounter strengthens our recognition of the value of being alive, of being able to experience joy and peace.”
