bell hooks Quotes
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The ethic of liberal individualism has so deeply permeated the psyches of blacks... of all classes that we have little support for a political ethic of communalism that promotes the sharing of resources.
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In general, the mass media tell us that black people are not loving, that our lives are so fraught with violence and aggression that we have no time to love.
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I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.
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No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.
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I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.
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Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
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An often-repeated assertion in the body of film criticism I have written is the assertion that movies do not just mirror the culture of any given time; they also create it.
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Using pseudonyms was such a part of the early feminist movement. We didn't want to have this star system. We wanted attention on the ideas, not the persona of the writer.
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You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.
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Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.
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I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.
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Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted very much to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible.
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Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
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It really fascinates me what white people are allowed to write about.
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There is a lushness to how my mind works.
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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!'
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For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?
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Whenever women struggle with breast cancer and face better care than ever, that's feminism.
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I can be standing in Barneys with my coat and purse and my selections, and some white woman will say, 'Can you get this in my size?' What she sees is a black woman, and her service button goes off.
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The people I love, I'm committed to loving for the rest of my life.
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I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.
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I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.
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I think I was always obsessed with esthetics.
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What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.