773 Quotes by Bell Hooks

Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.

We are rarely able to interact only with folks like ourselves, who think as we do. No matter how much some of us deny this reality and long for the safety and familiarity of sameness, inclusive ways of knowing and living offer us the only true way to emancipate ourselves from the divisions that limit our minds and imaginations.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.

Knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into that sea of despair.

This rule of silence is upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy access even to the word “patriarchy.” Most children do not learn what to call this system of institutionaliz ed gender roles, so rarely do we name it in everyday speech. This silence promotes denial. And how can we organize to challenge and change a system that cannot be named?

The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity. Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.

I have always been a flirt. My mother says whe I was a child, I used to stand outside the house and just smile at everyone who walked by. Like, 'Please take me with you!'

All my life I have longed to have a loving relationship that would last a lifetime.

Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.