Who is Bell Hooks?
Table of Contents
Bell Hooks is the pen name of the famous American writer Gloria Jean Watkins. She is not only a writer but also a professor, social worker, and feminist. The different identities of Bell Hooks become united in her single personality. Bell Hooks make herself a famous writer by writing on the social problems of female members of America.
Besides this, Bell Hooks also wrote about racial discrimination, capitalism, and many other problems of American society. Bell Hooks quotes introduce her to the world with some specialties. Bell Hooks quotes are mostly related to American social problems.
Top 55 Bell Hooks Quotes:
1. 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?—Bell Hooks
2. 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. —Bell Hooks
3. 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. —Bell Hooks
4. 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. —Bell Hooks
5. Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books. —Bell Hooks
6. 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-threatening poverty, addiction, or state terrorism.—Bell Hooks
7. I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.—Bell Hooks
8. 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.—Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks quotes on love:
9. “Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.”—Bell Hooks
10. If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.—Bell Hooks
11. 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
12. 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.—Bell Hooks
13. Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.—Bell Hooks
14. 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
15. I feel that my environment reflects my belief in the grace and art and elegance of living simply. —Bell Hooks
16. Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other. —Bell Hooks
17. 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.—Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks quotes feminism :
18. Whenever women struggle with breast cancer and face better care than ever, that’s feminism. —Bell Hooks
19. 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. —Bell Hooks
20. 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. —Bell Hooks
21. I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness. —Bell Hooks
22. You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.—Bell Hooks
23. Every terrorist regime in the world uses isolation to break people’s spirits. —Bell Hooks
24. Live simply so that others may simply live. —Bell Hooks
25. 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. —Bell Hooks
26. We judge on the basis of what somebody looks like, skin color, whether we think they’re beautiful or not. That space on the Internet allows you to converse with somebody with none of those things involved. —Bell Hooks
27. 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. —Bell Hooks
28. I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.—Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks quotes on healing :
29. Until the legacy of remembered and reenacted trauma is taken seriously, black America cannot heal. —Bell Hooks
30. The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech. —Bell Hooks
31. 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. —Bell Hooks
32. These days I wonder more and more why people are pessimistic when American history actually supports optimism. —Bell Hooks
33. I love my family, even as I critique their dysfunctionalities. —Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks quotes oppression :
34. All the men I fall for seem to have a commitment problem. —Bell Hooks
35. Any society based on domination supports and condones violence. —Bell Hooks
36. The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.—Bell Hooks
37. Certainly we can end racism with love. We can demand that the federal government change its emphasis on racial distinction. —Bell Hooks
38. I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously. —Bell Hooks
39. I’m such a girl for the living room. I really like to stay in my nest and not move. I travel in my mind, and that that’s a rigorous state of journeying for me. My body isn’t that interested in moving from place to place. —Bell Hooks
40. The people I love, I’m committed to loving for the rest of my life. —Bell Hooks
41. Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.—Bell Hooks
42. 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. —Bell Hooks
43. 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
44. Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims.—Bell Hooks
46. I think the Women’s movement has had a major impact on everybody’s lives in our nation and in the world as a whole. —Bell Hooks
47. The institutionalization of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, all of these things, led to a sense that the struggle was over for a lot of people and that one did not have to continue the personal consciousness-raising and changing of one’s viewpoint.—Bell Hooks
48. I think life experiences are different for people who know what they want as children. —Bell Hooks
49. All over the world, young males and females, schooled in the art of patriarchal thinking, are building an identity on a foundation that sees the will to do violence as the essential way to assert being. —Bell Hooks
50. I think I was always obsessed with esthetics. —Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks quotes on education :
51. I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love. —Bell Hooks
52. 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. —Bell Hooks
53. I’ve written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism. —Bell Hooks
54. 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!’ —Bell Hooks
55. 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. —Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks Biography :
The biography helps us to understand everything about a person. As we are discussing a great American writer, we have to discuss her biography, in short, to know about her very well. Let’s discuss Bell Hooks’s biography.
Bell Hooks Early Life
The early life of Bell Hooks was a stereotype of African-American children’s early life. She was born on 25 September 1952 in Hopkinsville near Kentucky. Her family suffered a lot from poverty.
Her father and mother both were in the low profession. The early life of this famous writer suffered a lot at the hands of white people. For that reason, Bell Hooks’s writing gets an expression of these discriminations.
Bell Hooks Education
Poverty and racial discrimination could not stop the education of Bell Hooks. She continued studying facing hardships. She started her education at a white community school. Here Bell Hooks had to face many problems but she did not stop. Hopkinsville High School is the school from where she completed her school education. Bell Hooks also completed BA and MA from Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison respectively. Her higher education subject was English.
Bell Hooks Career
Though Bell Hooks is mainly known for her writing, her first profession was teaching. She started her teaching career as an English lecturer at the University of Southern California in 1976. Her first book was published after three years of her being a lecturer. The first book’s name was “And There We Wept”.
This was the beginning of her writing career. After this Bell Hooks continues writing famous books. “All About Love: New Visions”, “Ain’t I a Woman?” and “Feminism Is for Everybody” are some of her famous books.
Why should we follow Bell Hooks?
Working for society and human rights are very good sides of a human being. We all should do that and also, we all should love the people who do this. Bell Hooks has all these qualities. She is a writer with strong protecting zeal. She always tried to protest against the injustice of society.
She also worked for humanity. For these reasons, we should follow Bell Hooks. One more specialty of this great writer is her writing quality. Bell Hooks always tried to inspire her readers through her writings. Her quotes serve this purpose very much. Bell Hooks quotes help her readers to good teachings from them.
Finally, we can say that Bell Hooks is a person with an unstoppable spirit. Every obstacle becomes futile against her spirit. She is a good teacher in her university and also in her writings and quotes.
