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Being oppressed means the absence of choices

Bell Hooks

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Bell Hooks
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More quotes by Bell Hooks

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Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.
Bell Hooks
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Solidarity is not the same as support. To experience solidarity, we must have a community of interests, shared beliefs and goals around which to unite, to build Sisterhood. Support can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment.
Bell Hooks
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I think this is often misunderstood in the West, where people feel that there can be no justice unless everything is the same. This is part of why I feel we have to relearn how we think about love, because we think about love so much in terms of the self.
Bell Hooks
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..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.
Bell Hooks
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When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
Bell Hooks
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I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.
Bell Hooks
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A central theme of all about love is that from childhood into adulthood we are often taught misguided and false assumptions about the nature of love. Perhaps the most common false assumption about love is that love means we will not be challenged or changed.
Bell Hooks
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I feel sad that we have allowed these knee-jerk feminists who want to act like it's a struggle against men...but again that's the least politically developed strand of feminism.
Bell Hooks
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Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.
Bell Hooks
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Writing and performing should deepen the meaning of words, should illuminate, transfix and transform.
Bell Hooks
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I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life) to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanization and despair.
Bell Hooks
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Without justice there can be no love.
Bell Hooks
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. . .there is an element of Play that is almost ritualistic in Black folk life. It serves to mediate the tensions, stress, and pain of constant exploitation and oppression.
Bell Hooks
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In a culture of domination, preoccupation with victimage is inevitable.
Bell Hooks
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I think we are obsessed in the U.S. with the personal, in ways that blind us to more important issues of life. I just think if we could take all the obsession with the personal (inaudible), and personal judgment and have people be concerned about the environment, what a different world we would live in.
Bell Hooks
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...move from emphasis on personal lifestyle issues toward creating political paradigms and radical models of social change that emphasize collective as well as individual change.
Bell Hooks
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I believe that it is impossible for two individuals not committed to their own and each other’s well being to sustain a healthy and enduring relationship.
Bell Hooks
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A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.
Bell Hooks
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The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.
Bell Hooks
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If you're in a domestic situation where the man is violent, patriarchy and male domination - even though you understand it intersectionally - you focus, you highlight that dimension of it, if that's what is needed to change the situation.
Bell Hooks