Bell Hooks Quotes

But isn't the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn't? It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around - walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing.

Only ... from personal experience [can a man] take the necessary measures without a preliminary process of trial and error.

Don't be the ammunition wagon, be the rifle... knowledge exists primarily for use.

Knowledge is power only when put to use - and then only when the use made of it is constructive.

Unless you can be in a place yourself and go through the subject of your story yourself, the next best thing is not to read a book about it, or see a movie about it, it's to talk to the people who've been there.

He, who learns and makes no use of his learning, is a beast of burden, with a load of books.

The devil knows more from experience than from being the devil

It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.

Power grows out of Organized Knowledge, but mind you, it grows out of it, through Application and Use.

I'm trying to find out what's actually true, which is nearly always something, if not a world of things, that you can't read in books.

You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.

Learning locked in mildewed books is of little use to anyone and therefore of no value unless it can be used.

Only so much of life do I know as I have lived.

It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.

The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information - we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.

It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.

A person who has experienced something is almost always far more expert on it than are the experts.

It is not difficult to know a thing; what is difficult is to know how to use what you know

If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.

Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven't learned a thing until you take action and use it.

Real understanding does not come from what we learn in books; it comes from what we learn from love of nature, of music, of man. For only what is learned in that way is truly understood.

Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportional to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better.

Knowledge, like religion, must be experienced in order to be known.