critics

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.
  ~ bell hooks
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For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?
  ~ bell hooks
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If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.
  ~ bell hooks
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We judge on the basis of what somebody looks like, skin color, whether we think they're beautiful or not. That space on the Internet allows you to converse with somebody with none of those things involved.
  ~ bell hooks
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You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.
  ~ bell hooks
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I'm such a girl for the living room. I really like to stay in my nest and not move. I travel in my mind, and that that's a rigorous state of journeying for me. My body isn't that interested in moving from place to place.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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It's in the act of having to do things that you don't want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.
  ~ bell hooks
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Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.
  ~ bell hooks
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These days I wonder more and more why people are pessimistic when American history actually supports optimism.
  ~ bell hooks
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Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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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
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All over the world, young males and females, schooled in the art of patriarchal thinking, are building an identity on a foundation that sees the will to do violence as the essential way to assert being.
  ~ bell hooks
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Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted very much to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible.
  ~ bell hooks
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I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.
  ~ bell hooks
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Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
  ~ bell hooks
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I think I was always obsessed with esthetics.
  ~ bell hooks
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I think the Women's movement has had a major impact on everybody's lives in our nation and in the world as a whole.
  ~ bell hooks
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Every terrorist regime in the world uses isolation to break people's spirits.
  ~ bell hooks
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Until the legacy of remembered and reenacted trauma is taken seriously, black America cannot heal.
  ~ bell hooks
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Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.
  ~ bell hooks
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Certainly we can end racism with love. We can demand that the federal government change its emphasis on racial distinction.
  ~ bell hooks
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The people I love, I'm committed to loving for the rest of my life.
  ~ bell hooks
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Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
  ~ bell hooks
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Live simply so that others may simply live.
  ~ bell hooks
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I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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Since anti-racist individuals did not control mass media, the media became the primary tool that would be used and is still used to convince black viewers, and everyone else, of black inferiority.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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But love is really more of an interactive process. It's about what we do not just what we feel. It's a verb, not a noun.
  ~ bell hooks
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I feel that my environment reflects my belief in the grace and art and elegance of living simply.
  ~ bell hooks
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Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.
  ~ bell hooks
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I don't think you can hate anything that you know intimately. There is no fine line separating love from hate because there's a deep chasm separating love from hate.
  ~ bell hooks
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Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?
  ~ bell hooks
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I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.
  ~ bell hooks
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I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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I have always been a flirt. My mother says whe I was a child, I used to stand outside the house and just smile at everyone who walked by. Like, 'Please take me with you!'
  ~ bell hooks
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I told my parents when I was 12 I'd be a writer.
  ~ bell hooks
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I love my family, even as I critique their dysfunctionalities.
  ~ bell hooks
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The ethic of liberal individualism has so deeply permeated the psyches of blacks... of all classes that we have little support for a political ethic of communalism that promotes the sharing of resources.
  ~ bell hooks
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I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness.
  ~ bell hooks
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Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.
  ~ bell hooks
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Death is with you all the time; you get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it's not unfamiliar to you. It's always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.
  ~ bell hooks
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I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ 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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I get so tired of people acting like, you know, black men and women never help each other, never support each other.
  ~ bell hooks
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What's really sad is that so many young women between the ages of 16 and 25 are ignorant and they already believe that women get the same pay as men. They don't even really understand that equality hasn't happened with the pay force.
  ~ bell hooks
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I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our health.
  ~ 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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The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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Using pseudonyms was such a part of the early feminist movement. We didn't want to have this star system. We wanted attention on the ideas, not the persona of the writer.
  ~ bell hooks
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All the men I fall for seem to have a commitment problem.
  ~ bell hooks
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I think life experiences are different for people who know what they want as children.
  ~ bell hooks
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In this culture, the phrase 'black woman' is not synonymous with 'tender,' or 'gentle.' It's as if those words couldn't possibly speak to the reality of black females.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims.
  ~ bell hooks
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I can be standing in Barneys with my coat and purse and my selections, and some white woman will say, 'Can you get this in my size?' What she sees is a black woman, and her service button goes off.
  ~ bell hooks
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There is a lushness to how my mind works.
  ~ bell hooks
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It really fascinates me what white people are allowed to write about.
  ~ bell hooks
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Whenever women struggle with breast cancer and face better care than ever, that's feminism.
  ~ bell hooks
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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.
  ~ bell hooks
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The institutionalization of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, all of these things, led to a sense that the struggle was over for a lot of people and that one did not have to continue the personal consciousness-raising and changing of one's viewpoint.
  ~ bell hooks
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A major part of love is commitment. If we are committed to someone, if I'm committed to loving you, then it's not possible for me to 'fall out of love.'
  ~ bell hooks
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Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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We need to hear the excuses men make to themselves for their worthlessness.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.
  --  Margaret Fuller
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The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or against assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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As long as there is rape... there is not going to be any peace or justice or equality or freedom. You are not going to become what you want to become or who you want to become. You are not going to live in the world you want to live in.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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You think intercourse is a private act; it's not, it's a social act. Men are sexually predatory in life; and women are sexually manipulative. When two individuals come together and leave their gender outside the bedroom door, then they make love.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on it.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Childbearing is glorified in part because women die from it.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Men are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence rather than to be victimized by it.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Being a Jew, one learns to believe in the reality of cruelty and one learns to recognize indifference to human suffering as a fact.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Women's fashion' is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Men know everything - all of them - all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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No woman needs intercourse; few women escape it.
 ~  Andrea Dworkin
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Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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It seems not to have been written. It is the quintessence of life. It is the basic truth.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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There is no joy so great as that of reporting that a good play has come to town.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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Good plays drive bad playgoers crazy.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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The most fatal illusion is the narrow point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
  --  Brooks Atkinson
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