773 Quotes by Bell Hooks

Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. 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.

...it is the most militant, most radical intervention anyone can make to not only speak of love, but to engage in the practice of love. For love as the foundation of all social movements for self-determination is the only way we create a world that domination and dominator thinking cannot destroy. Anytime we do the work of love we are doing the work of ending domination.

With reciprocity all things do not need to be equal in order for acceptance and mutuality to thrive. If equality is evoked as the only standard by which it is deemed acceptable for people to meet across boundaries and create community, then there is little hope. Fortunately, mutuality is a more constructive and positive foundation for the building of ties that allow for differences in status, position, power, and privilege whether determined by race, class, sexuality, religion, or nationality.

The confederate flag, for example, will never stand for heritage for black folks. It still awakens fear in the minds and imaginations of elder black folks for whom it signaled the support of white racist assault on blackness

I have found white neighborhoods in all the privileged-class environments I have lived in throughout the United States, including Kentucy, to have as active a presence of racial prejudice as their poor counterparts.

We cannot have a wolrd of great environmentalism while we maintain the violence of whtie supremacy and racism.

Significantly, in future feminist movement we will spend less time critiquing patriarchal marriage bonds and expend more effort showing alternatives, showing the value of peer relationships which are founded on principles of equality, respect, and the belief that mutual satisfaction and growth are needed for partnerships to be fulfilling and lasting.

The principle of equality, which is at the core of democratic values, has very little meaning in a world in which global oligarchy is taking over.

The message given males is that to be honest is to be “soft.” The ability to be dishonest and indifferent to the consequences makes a male hard, separates the men from the boys.