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The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know that just is not true.

Bell Hooks

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Bell Hooks
Better
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More quotes by Bell Hooks

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Professors rarely speak of the place of eros or the erotic in our classrooms. Trained in the philosophical context of Western metaphysical dualism, many of us have accepted the notion that there is a split between the body and the mind. Believing this, individuals enter the classroom to teach as though only the mind is present, and not the body.
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One difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.
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Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.
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The challenge these days, is to be somewhere, to belong to some particular place, invest oneself in it, draw strength and courage from it, to dwell in a community.
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I'm lucky. I think it's good that I have a body of work that addresses different things in different ways.
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Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
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The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women's studies classes and said, Black women have always worked.
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The world would be a paradise of peace and justice if global citizens shared a common definition of love which would guide our thoughts and action.
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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.
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The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem.
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Sexism has always been a political stance mediating social domination, enabling white men and black men to share a common sensibility about sex roles and the importance of male domination.
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I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this “In order to love you, I must make you something else”. That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.
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I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.
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The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.
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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.
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... feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, orwe are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.
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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.
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Like many white liberals, Ken sees the whiteness of his social life as more an accident of circumstance than a choice. He would welcome greater diversity in the neighbourhood. However, he does not consciously do enough work either in his social life or in the larger community to make that diversity possible.
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The intellectual tradition of the West is very individualistic. It's not community-based. The intellectual is often thought of as a person who is alone and cut off from the world. So I have had to practice being willing to leave the space of my study to be in community, to work in community, and to be changed by community.
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Readers forget that one can critique yet still admire.
Bell Hooks