773 Quotes by Bell Hooks

Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love’s path is communication.

Part of the heart of anarchy is, dare to go against the grain of the conventional ways of thinking about our realities. Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that’s been a place of hope.

All awakening to love is spiritual awakening.

Education as the practice of freedom affirms healthy selfesteem in students as it promotes their capacity to be aware and live consciously. It teaches them to reflect and act in ways that further self-actualization, rather than conformity to the status quo.

My belief that God is love, that love is everything – our true destiny – sustains me.

To be true to patriarchy we are all taught that we must keep men’s secrets.

The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women’s studies classes and said, “Black women have always worked.”

Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment... ‘dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love – which is to transform us.’ Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.

When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat.