Bell Hooks Quotes

“Since the notion that we should all forsake attachment to race and/or cultural identity and be “just humans” within the framework of white supremacy has usually meant that subordinate groups must surrender their identities, beliefs, values, and assimilate by adopting the values and beliefs of privileged-class whites, rather than promoting racial harmony this thinking has created a fierce cultural protectionism.”
― bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism

“Life is a useless passion, an exciting journey of a mammal in survival mode. Each day is a miracle, a blessing unexplored and the more you immerse yourself in light, the less you will feel the darkness. There is more to life than nothingness. And cynicism. And nihilism. And selfishness. And glorious isolation. Be selfish with yourself, but live your life through your immortal acts, acts that engrain your legacy onto humanity. Transcend your fears and follow yourself into the void instead of letting yourself get eaten up by entropy and decay. Freedom is being yourself without permission. Be soft and leave a lasting impression on everybody you meet”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“Study yourself. Become your own mentor and best friend. When you are suffering stay at the bottom until you find out who you are. Let the storms come and pass. How you walk through the fire says a lot about you. Nobody likes a victimhood mentality and what happened to you is not important. It is about how you use your chaos that matters. The dawn will come”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“Young girls often feel strong, courageous, highly creative, and powerful until they begin to receive undermining sexist messages that encourage them to conform to conventional notions of femininity. To conform they have to give up power.”
― bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love

“Vulnerability is the least celebrated emotion in our society”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“You are not always right. It’s not always about being right. The best thing you can offer others is understanding. Being an active listener is about more than just listening, it is about reciprocating and being receptive to somebody else. Everybody has woes. Nobody is safe from pain. However, we all suffer in different ways. So learn to adapt to each person, know your audience and reserve yourself for people who have earned the depths of you”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“Women will only be truly sexually liberated when we arrive at a place where we can see ourselves as having sexual value and agency irrespective of whether of not we are the objects of male desire.”
― bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

“Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth.”
― bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love

“I don't trust anybody who isn't a little bit neurotic”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels--sex, race, and class, to name a few--and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”
― bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

“I take it as a compliment when somebody calls me crazy. I would be offended if I was one of the sheeple, one of the sleepwalkers in the matrix or part of the collective hallucination we call 'normal”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“I really like to stay in my nest and not move. I travel in my mind, and that's a rigorous state of journeying for me. My body isn't that interested in moving from place to place.”
― bell hooks

“Our society shuns people for being a bright light in the world. Sometimes if you are too futuristic people do not like how revolutionary you are”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“Give someone everything you can think of, the wings to fly and the roots to stay. If they chose none of these hold the door open for them with a smile”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“I am a habitual rule-breaker”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“Wisely, Baldwin insisted that we are always more than our pain. Not only did he believe in our capacity to love, he felt black people were uniquely situated to risk loving because we had suffered.”
― bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love

“I have been at war with parts of myself for so long”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“She was one of the greatest losses, bell hooks...
a brilliant thinker, and writer,
and teacher,
reflective and brave and inspiring,
revolutionary ideas infused with ancestral wisdom,
always coming from a place of love,
which kept her in a world of possibility.”
― Shellen Lubin

“Your fear of becoming a cliche is what turns you into one. If you remove the fear, we are all really walking contradictions, hypocrites and paradoxical cliches”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“Addressing the economic plight of women may ultimately be the feminist platform that draws a collective response. It may well become the place of collective organizing, the common ground, the issue that unites all women.”
― bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

“This is the oppressor's language yet I need it to talk to you.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Liberation of the Spirit

As a girl, touched by the mystical dimensions of Christian faith, I felt the presence of the Beloved in my heart: the oneness of our life. At that time, when I had not yet learned the right language, I knew only that despite the troubles of my world, the suffering I witnessed around and within me, there was always available a spiritual force that could lift me higher, that could give me moments of transcendent bliss wherein I could surrender all thought of the world and know profound peace.
Early on, my heart had been touched by its delight. I knew its rapture. Early on, I made a commitment to be a seeker on the path: a seeker after truth. I was determined to live a life in the spirit. The black theologian James Cone says that our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived:

'If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to prepare for it; for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.'

In reflecting on my youth, I emphasize the mystical dimension of the Christian faith because it was that aspect of religious experience that I found to be truly liberatory. The more fundamental religious beliefs that were taught to me urging blind obedience to authority and acceptance of oppressive hierarchies-- this didn't move me. no, it was those mystical experiences that enabled me to understand and recognize the realm of being in a spiritual experience that transcends both authority and law.”
― bell hooks, Teaching Community

“...the injustice and systemic oppression that we see in the world today stem from a deep, collective lovelessness and calls for an ethic of love.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“Critical interventions around race did not destroy the women's movement; it became stronger . . . It shows us that no matter how misguided feminist thinkers have been in the past, the will to change, the will to create the context for struggle and liberation, remains stronger than the need to hold on to wrong beliefs and assumptions.”
― bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

“Political solidarity between women always undermines sexism and sets the stage for the overthrow of patriarchy.”
― bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

“علِّمُ العديد من الآباء أبناءَهم أن العنف هو الطريقة الأسهل (إن لم تكن الأكثر قبولاً) لإنهاء النزاع وتمكين القوة. وذلك مثلاً من خلال قول: "أنا أفعل هذا فقط لأنني أحبكم." عندما يستعمل الأهل العنف الجسدي للسيطرة على الأبناء فهم لا يساوون العنف بالحب فحسب، بل يُقدّمون أيضاً مفهوماً للحب يرادف القبول السلبي وغياب التفسير والنقاش. يجد الأطفال والمراهقون في الكثير من المنازل أن رغبتهم في مناقشة قضاياهم مع والديهم تُصوَّر في بعض الأحيان تحدياً للسلطة الأبوية، وفعلاً يفتقر للحب. (...)
لقد تمت توأمة الحب والعنف في هذا المجتمع حتى أصبح الكثير من الناس، خاصة النساء، يخافون من أن نبذ العنف سيؤدي إلى خسارة الحب.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“يعلّم العديد من الآباء أبناءَهم أن العنف هو الطريقة الأسهل (إن لم تكن الأكثر قبولاً) لإنهاء النزاع وتمكين القوة. وذلك مثلاً من خلال قول: "أنا أفعل هذا فقط لأنني أحبكم." عندما يستعمل الأهل العنف الجسدي للسيطرة على الأبناء فهم لا يساوون العنف بالحب فحسب، بل يُقدّمون أيضاً مفهوماً للحب يرادف القبول السلبي وغياب التفسير والنقاش. يجد الأطفال والمراهقون في الكثير من المنازل أن رغبتهم في مناقشة قضاياهم مع والديهم تُصوَّر في بعض الأحيان تحدياً للسلطة الأبوية، وفعلاً يفتقر للحب. (...)
لقد تمت توأمة الحب والعنف في هذا المجتمع حتى أصبح الكثير من الناس، خاصة النساء، يخافون من أن نبذ العنف سيؤدي إلى خسارة الحب.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims of the genocidal campaign that white America is waging against them.”
― David Horowitz, Hating Whitey: And Other Progressive Causes

“words have weight—
you bear with me
the weight of my words
suffering whaever pain
this burden causes you
in silence—

i bow to you—”
― Rosa bell and Veodis Watkins (bell hooks: remembered rapture

“La marginalità è un luogo radicale di possibilità, uno spazio di resistenza. Questa marginalità, che ho definito come spazialmente strategica per la produzione di un discorso contro-egemonico, è presente non solo nelle parole, ma anche nei modi di essere e di vivere. Non mi riferivo, quindi, a una marginalità che si spera di perdere – lasciare o abbandonare – via via che ci si avvicina al centro, ma piuttosto a un luogo in cui abitare, a cui restare attaccati e fedeli, perché di esso si nutre la nostra capacità di resistenza. Un luogo capace di offrirci la possibilità di una prospettiva radicale da cui guardare, creare, immaginare alternative e nuovi mondi.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center