Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Writing and the hope of writing pulls me back from the edges of despair. I believe insanity and despair are at times one and the same.
Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.
Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously.
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.
Sadly, children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only.
No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.
Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment. Self-love cannot flourish in isolation.
Representation is a crucial location of struggle for any exploited and oppressed people asserting subjectivity and decolonization of the mind.
To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.
Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.
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.
We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic.
The world would be a paradise of peace and justice if global citizens shared a common definition of love which would guide our thoughts and action.
We all may have prejudices, but we're not all part of a system that reinforces, reinvents and reaffirms itself every day of our lives, systemically.
What's so amazing about this historical moment is that it is bringing class to the fore and we have to think about the nature of work and hierarchy.
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.
If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.
Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now ... based on acceptance of patriarchal notions of masculinity.
It is crucial for the future of the Black liberation struggle that we remain ever mindful that ours is a shared struggle, that we are each other's fate.
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.'
The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.
I believe that it is impossible for two individuals not committed to their own and each other’s well being to sustain a healthy and enduring relationship.
When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise. They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny.
The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet al the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.
The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our ‘natural’ condition.
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.
Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings.
Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.
I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom.
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.
Most of us did not learn when we were young that our capacity to be self-loving would be shaped by the work we do and whether that work enhances our well-being.
To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.
As we search as a nation for constructive ways to challenge racism and white supremacy, it is absolutely essential that progressive female voices gain a hearing.
It's interesting to look at all the aspects where everyday Americans, many of whom are not college educated, are thinking deeply now about our economic structure.
Yearning is the word that best describes a common psychological state shared by many of us, cutting across boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexual practice.
We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.
Feminist politics aims to end domination, to free us to be who we are - to live lives where we love justice, where we can live in peace. Feminism is for everybody.
The challenge these days, is to be somewhere, to belong to some particular place, invest oneself in it, draw strength and courage from it, to dwell in a community.
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.
If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.
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.
When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.
Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource.
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.
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.
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.
The true teacher is within us. A good teacher is someone who can help you to go back and touch the true teacher within, because you already have the insight within you.
It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.
The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women's studies classes and said, "Black women have always worked."
Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power - not because they don't see it, but because they see it and they don't want it to exist.