quotes by bell hooks

""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

"feminism is for everybody"
— bell hooks

"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

"Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books. "
— bell hooks

""When we drop fear, we an 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 (Communion: The Female Search for Love)

"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

"The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our ‘natural’ condition."
— bell hooks

"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."
— bell hooks (Teaching to Transgress)

"Being oppressed means the absence of choices"
— bell hooks

"Think of all the women you know who will not allow themselves to be seen without makeup. I often wonder how they feel about themselves at night when they are climbing into bed with intimate partners. Are they overwhelmed with secret shame that someone sees them as they really are? Or do they sleep with rage that who they really are can be celebrated or cared for only in secret?"
— bell hooks (Communion: The Female Search for Love)

"Without justice there can be no love."
— bell hooks

"Living simply makes loving simple."
— bell hooks

"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