Bell Hooks Quotes

Most were beginning to feel they had learned enough to last for the rest of their lives. They remained mathematicians, but largely went their own way.

I do regret that when I went to college, I didn't have a liberal arts education. I got a BFA in musical theater, so it was a very directed toward what I was doing. I wish that I had expanded my horizons a little bit.

I feel lucky in that I don't really have to go to college to study something job-specific. I just want to go to learn about what is interesting to me and learn about the classes that you don't really get to take in high school because you have to take the basics.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

I studied art history and philosophy and took economics and political science classes. I just took whatever I wanted and I didn't worry about grades and I read and learned a lot, and I didn't have much of a social life, so it was deeply absorbing.

The liberal arts inform and enlighten the independent citizen of a democracy in the use of his own resources.... They enlarge his capacity for self-knowledge and expand his opportunities for self-improvement.... They are the wellsprings of a free society.

Among the liberal arts, let us begin with the art that liberates us.

I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education.

he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

I hate, loathe and despise schools.School is bad for you if you have any talent. You should be cultivating that talent in your own particular way.

I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.

We are entering a hyperconnected world where every boss now has more access, cheap access to cheap labor, cheap genius, cheap robot, cheap software, and then this world averages over. There is only one answer to that, and that is to get everyone as close as possible to some form of post-secondary education, it could be vocational, it can be liberal arts, it can be science and technology.

I don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point.

I got a liberal arts education just because I felt like I should to keep my parents happy, but it was for them. If it was up to me, I would've just moved to New York.

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art. When you read some books they are fantastic, the writer touches something in you that you know you would not have brought out of yourself. He makes you discover something interesting in your life. If you are living like an animal, what is the point of living? What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art.

Universities are fantastic places to gain knowledge on a subject, develop a personal network, explore your character and learn new techniques to approach problems. I do however believe that there is a strong argument for students who have an idea they are passionate about to just try and turn it into a reality. I fell into this category and I don't regret not going to University.

Look," said Janet, irritated, "if the thing you liked best to do in the world was read, and somebody offered to pay you room and board and give you a liberal arts degree if you would just read for four years, wouldn't you do it?

You can finish school, and even make it easy - but you never finish your education, and it's seldom easy.

I believe I have a lot to learn in life, still.

I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.

The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.

I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that's the most unlikely thing ever to have been... But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I've come to.