bell hooks

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.

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.

Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.

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.

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.

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.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.

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.

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.

Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.

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.