Bell Hooks Quotes

The easiest method of acquiring the habit of scholarship is through acquiring the ability to express oneself clearly in discussing and disputing scholarly problems. This is what clarifies their import and makes them understandable. Some students spend most of their lives attending scholarly sessions. Still, one finds them silent. They do not talk and do not discuss matters. More than is necessary, they are concerned with memorizing. Thus, they do not obtain much of a habit in the practice of scholarship and scholarly instruction.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.

A commitment to human rights cannot be fostered simply through the transmission of knowledge. Action and experience play a crucial role in the learning process.

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.

I believe that the best way to help people understand the world is to provide them with opportunities to actively explore, experiment, and express themselves.

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.

The very first instrument for the improvement of the condition of men is knowledge.

The three most important things our Black people need for his health are education, education and education.

A living art of teaching, one that rests on a true understanding of the human being, has a thread of strength running through it that stimulates individual students to participate so that it is not necessary to keep their attention through direct 'individualized' treatment.

We learn to do by doing.

The student is to read history actively and not passively.

What you really want to do, the objective is to get as many students coming out of there thinking differently than they went in.

What I tell kids is don't get mad (about censorship) get even. Run, don't walk, to the first library you can find, and read what they're trying to keep out of your eyes. Read what they're trying to keep out of your brains. Because that's exactly what you need to know.

True teaching liberates the student from his teacher.

The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming.

I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom.

An education that teaches you to understand something about the world has done only half of the assignment. The other half is to teach you to do something about making the world a better place.

Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.

In this box are all the words I know… Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is use them well and in the right places.

Properly, we should read for power.

I believe education is the great equalizer. Our children are our hope for the future, so we have an obligation to provide them with the tools to succeed. There is no more powerful tool than knowledge.