Quote

Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.

Bell Hooks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bell Hooks
Love
Claim
Opposite
Abuse
Negate
Opposites
Rightfully
Claims
Behaving
Loving
Affirmation
Foundation
Humiliation
Care
Neglect

More quotes by Bell Hooks

Image
Writing and the hope of writing pulls me back from the edges of despair. I believe insanity and despair are at times one and the same.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
This rule of silence is upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy access even to the word “patriarchy.” Most children do not learn what to call this system of institutionaliz ed gender roles, so rarely do we name it in everyday speech. This silence promotes denial. And how can we organize to challenge and change a system that cannot be named?
Bell Hooks
Image
If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.
Bell Hooks
Image
Feminist pedagogy can only be liberatory if it is truly revolutionary because the mechanisms of appropriation within white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy are able to co-opt with tremendous ease that which merely appears radical or subversive
Bell Hooks
Image
Black women control the world. We are through being discriminated against.
Bell Hooks
Image
The most basic activism we can have in our lives is to live consciously in a nation living in fantasies. Living consciously is living with a core of healthy self-esteem. You will face reality, you will not delude yourself.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
It is a distortion of the notion of romantic love to want to see obedience as the quintessential expression of respect.
Bell Hooks
Image
Being oppressed means the absence of choices
Bell Hooks
Image
Part of why I have started writing about love is feeling that our culture is forgetting what Martin Luther King taught. We name more and more streets and schools after him but that's almost irrelevant, because what is to be remembered is that strength to love.
Bell Hooks
Image
To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.
Bell Hooks
Image
Hip-Hop is diverse. But the white, capitalist producers and distributors of Hip-Hop are most interested in the Hip-Hip that is misogynist, that is Black-hating, that is pugilistic, that is to say all about fighting and war and killing and gangsterism.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings.
Bell Hooks
Image
We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic.
Bell Hooks
Image
It is poetry that changes everything.
Bell Hooks
Image
Often in my lectures when I use the phrase “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe our nation’s political system, audiences laugh. No one has ever explained why accurately naming this system is funny. The laughter is itself a weapon of patriarchal terrorism.
Bell Hooks
Image
The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.
Bell Hooks