Bell Hooks

The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.

Love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.

As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility.

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.

Spirituality and spiritual life give us the strength to love.

Most of us did not learn when we were young that our capacity to be self-loving would be shaped by the work we do and whether that work enhances our well-being.

Whenever domination is present, love is lacking.

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.

Because we have learned to believe negativity is more realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice.

Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.

Even the wealthiest professional woman can be "brought down" by being in a relationship where she longs to be loved and is consistently lied to. To the degree that she trusts her male companion, lying and other forms of betrayal will most likely shatter her self-confidence and self-esteem.

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.

Lying has become so much the accepted norm that people lie even when it would be simpler to tell the truth.

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.

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.

Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.

There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.

Writing is my passion. It is a way to experience the ecstatic. The root understanding of the word ecstasy—“to stand outside”—comes to me in those moments when I am immersed so deeply in the act of thinking and writing that everything else, even flesh, falls away.

It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.

Part of the racialized sexism wants everyone to think that a 15-year old Mexican is not a girl, she’s a woman. We know she’s a girl. We can never emphasize this enough, because this is the fate of colored girls globally right now: the denial of their girlhood, the denial of their childhood, and the constant state of risk and danger they are living in.