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Quote by Bell Hooks

“For many people the thrill of having more is intensified by the presence of those who have less. Waste is not the issue here. To many greedy individuals, power lies in withholding resources.”

Quote by Bell Hooks

Work

Where We Stand: Class Matters

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Author

Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins, is an American author, scholar, and activist. Her work primarily focuses on issues of race, gender, and social justice, particularly on feminist and black feminist thought. Hooks' works include novels, poetry, academic writings, and autobiographies, and her writing style is beloved by readers for its profound social insight and desire for change. more

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“But if today's low-income countries are to move from poverty to an incipient affluence... then none of those factors could make a difference without the rising consumption of fuels and electricity: a decoupling of economic growth and energy consumption during early stages of modern economic development would defy the laws of thermodynamics." (p. 350, italics added)”

“...the capital city had grown in alarming fashion: cardboard walls, tin roofs, people in rags clearly visible along the road from the airport. Since this made a very bad impression on visitors, for a long time the solution was to put up walls to hide them. As one politician said, 'Where there is poverty, hide it.”

“If you ask the other John and Peggy (my parents) how they’ve managed to stay married for well over half a century, they’ll credit an uncompromising level of honesty with each other. If you press them, though, you’ll learn that their commitment to the truth did not extend to their children. Indeed, when it came to raising three boys on a public school teachers salary, my parents lied like rugs./ It was a strange sort of snobbery to develop at such an early age - this sympathy for the more fortunate - but that’s precisely what my parents engendered. With duplicity and guile, they Turn envy to pity. By the time I was eleven, I felt nothing but compassion for classmates of mine who had been forced to wear the latest fashions. Sadly, they had no older cousins to provide them with a superior wardrobe of “softer, sturdier, broken-in alternatives.”

“Today, as never before: the tramps, the down-and-outs, the shopping-bag ladies, the drifters and drunks. They range from the merely destitute to the wretchedly broken. Wherever you turn, they are there, in good neighborhoods and bad. Some beg with a semblance of pride. Give me this money, they seem to say, and soon I will be back there with the rest of you, rushing back and forth on my daily rounds. Others have given up hope of ever leaving their tramphood. They lie there sprawled out on the sidewalk with their hat, or cup, or box, not even bothering to look up at the passerby, too defeated even to thank the ones who drop a coin beside them. Still others try to work for the money they are given: the blind pencil sellers, the winos who wash the windshield of your car. Some tell stories, usually tragic accounts of their own lives, as if to give their benefactors something for their kindness—even if only words.”

“It's definitely difficult being a woman and growing up a girl. When you're graceful, people say you lack personality; when you're serene, people say you're boring; when you're confident, people say you're arrogant; when you're feminine, people say you're too girly; and when you climb trees, people say you're too much of a tomboy! As a woman, you really need to develop a very strong sense of self and the earlier you can do that, the better! You have to be all the things that you are, without allowing other people's ignorance change you! I realized that they don't know what grace is, they can't identify serenity, they have inferiority complexes, they are incapable of being feminine, and they don't know how to climb trees!”