Bell Hooks Quotes

The black woman had had to struggle against being a person of great strength.

Out of the huts of history's shame I rise.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.

We have been listening year after year to [white people] and what have we got? We are not even allowed to think for ourselves. "I know what is best for you," but they don't know what is best for us! It is time now to let them know what they owe us, and they owe us a great deal.

Faced with destruction, the Jewish people survived.

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything.

We were not defeated. We had been refugees. Now we were freedom fighters.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise

I would even say that my parents, and their friends in our community, thought of education as a kind of armor against racism.

Under the worst conditions, horrendous conditions, people still, you know, fight for their rights and don't just succumb.

I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling human cruelty... break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more.

The struggle against patriarchy and racism must be substantively robust and inextricably intertwined.

Carry on, carry on, what don't kill us makes us strong.

Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas, the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible, that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses, no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.

somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.

Death is strong, but Life is stronger.

Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.

As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.

I've told you before and I'll tell you again. The strong survive and the weak disappear. We do not intend to disappear.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

When dams were erected on the Columbia, salmon battered themselves against the concrete, trying to return home. I expect no less from us. We too must hurl ourselves against and through the literal and metaphorical concrete that contains and constrains us, that keeps us from talking about what is most important to us, that keeps us from living the way our bones know we can, that bars us from our home. It only takes one person to bring down a dam.

My mother always taught me to be strong and to never be a victim. Never make excuses. Never expect anyone else to provide for me things I know I can provide for myself.