To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality. Bell Hooks More Quotes by Bell Hooks More Quotes From 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 let-it-go together feelings Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting. Bell Hooks perspective justice integrity If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue. Bell Hooks language chance littles Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives. Bell Hooks real love-is believe ..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor. Bell Hooks process use needs But love is really more of an interactive process. It's about what we do not just what we feel. It's a verb, not a noun. Bell Hooks nouns verbs love-is 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. Bell Hooks suffering hands thinking Within a capitalist consumer society, the cult of personality has the power to subsume ideas, to make the person, the personality into the product and not the work itself. Bell Hooks cult-of-personality consumers ideas Love is an action, never simply a feeling. Bell Hooks action feelings love-is Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else. Bell Hooks practice opportunity love To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. Bell Hooks communication care commitment I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison. Bell Hooks males black solitude They wanted black women to conform to the gender norms set by white society. They wanted to be recognized as 'men,' as patriarchs, by other men, including white men. Yet they could not assume this position if black women were not willing to conform to prevailing sexist gender norms. Many black women who has endured white-supremacist patriarchal domination during slavery did not want to be dominated by black men after manumission. Bell Hooks white-man black men I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life); to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanization and despair. Bell Hooks struggle healing writing Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books. Bell Hooks reading inspirational book Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart. Bell Hooks cynical heart people The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible. Bell Hooks imagine writing art If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle. Bell Hooks emotional party struggle There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few. Bell Hooks feminist long ideas I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, “Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight.” My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: “When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town – to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go. Bell Hooks pain healing writing
