True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it. Bell Hooks More Quotes by Bell Hooks More Quotes From Bell Hooks All efforts at self-transformation challenge us to engage in on-going, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, and about how we live in the world. This individual commitment, when coupled with engagement in collective discussion, provides a space for critical feedback which strengthens our efforts to change and make ourselves anew. Bell Hooks reflection self commitment schools for love do not exist. everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively. despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. however this love often eludes us. Bell Hooks how-to-love elude-us school Secrets find a way out in sleep . . . It is the place where there is no pretense. Bell Hooks secret sleep way All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity. Bell Hooks racist silence faces You must have courage to love, you have to have a profound will to do what is right to love, and it does not come easy. Bell Hooks doe love-you profound 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? Bell Hooks silence names children I think inequality is in our minds. I think this is what we learn through practice... The bridge of illusion must be shattered in order for a real bridge to be constructed. One of the things we learn is that inequality is an illusion. Bell Hooks real order thinking Even the most subjected person has moments of rage and resentment so intense that they respond, they act against. There is an inner uprising that leads to rebellion, however short- lived. It may be only momentary but it takes place. That space within oneself where resistance is possible remains. Bell Hooks uprising space may Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself. Bell Hooks self-love love giving I feel like there is always something trying to pull us back into sleep, that there is this sort of seductive quality in all the hedonistic pleasures that pull on us. Bell Hooks seductive sleep trying Fame is fun, money is useful, celebrity can be exciting, but finally life is about optimal well-being and how we achieve that in dominator culture, in a greedy culture, in a culture that uses so much of the world’s resources. How do men and women, boys and girls, live lives of compassion, justice and love? And I think that’s the visionary challenge for feminism and all other progressive movements for social change. Bell Hooks live-life girl fun In order for me to engage in a revolutionary struggle for collective Black self-determination, I have to engage feminism because that becomes the vehicle by which I project myself as a female into the heart of the struggle, but the heart of the struggle does not begin with feminism. It begins with an understanding of domination and with a critique of domination in all its forms. Bell Hooks determination struggle heart As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer. Bell Hooks color white people Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind. Bell Hooks educational heart thinking feminism is for everybody Bell Hooks feminism motivational It's in the act of having to do things that you don't want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego. Bell Hooks women fun moving The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin. Bell Hooks searching-for-love female self I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can’t read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance. Bell Hooks reading writing book Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation. Bell Hooks confused strong reality No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough. Bell Hooks women black writing
