About bell hooks: Gloria Jean Watkins is an American author, feminist, and social activist.
I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our health.
These days I wonder more and more why people are pessimistic when American history actually supports optimism.
There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether it's the mundane violence we do to our bodies by overeating toxic food or drink or the extreme violence of child abuse, domestic warfare, life-threaten...
Death is with you all the time; you get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it's not unfamiliar to you. It's always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.
What's really sad is that so many young women between the ages of 16 and 25 are ignorant and they already believe that women get the same pay as men. They don't even really understand that equality hasn't happened with the pay force.
I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.
When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.
To live fixated on the future is to engage in psychological denial. It is a form of psychic violence that prepares us to accept the violence needed to ensure the maintenance of imperialist, future-oriented society.
Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.
I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.
If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.
My idea of a delicious time is to read a book that is wonderful. But the ruling passion of my life is being a seeker after truth and the divine.
I think life experiences are different for people who know what they want as children.
I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.
The people I love, I'm committed to loving for the rest of my life.
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.
The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic.
Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.
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.
A major part of love is commitment. If we are committed to someone, if I'm committed to loving you, then it's not possible for me to 'fall out of love.'
I don't think you can hate anything that you know intimately. There is no fine line separating love from hate because there's a deep chasm separating love from hate.
