black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I’m a Christian, but I’m not a puritan. I believe in pleasure and orgiastic pleasure has its place, intellectual pleasure has its place, social pleasure has its place, televisual pleasure has its place [in life].

Cornel West

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.
CORNEL WEST

Ghetto Police Racism
You can’t have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.
CORNEL WEST

High Quality Trust Without
confining life to an eternal present is an insidious form of soul murder
CORNEL WEST

Form Murder Soul
Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.
CORNEL WEST

Culture Hip Hop Rap
There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference.
CORNEL WEST

Differences Fundamentals Organization
We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness.
CORNEL WEST

Kindness Radical Sweetness
He who learns death unlearns slavery.
CORNEL WEST

Slavery Thrive Unlearn
I’m actually with the classics in general in terms of understanding truth in an existential mode. Therefore, philosophy becomes more a way of life as opposed to simply a mode of discourse.
CORNEL WEST

Philosophy Understanding Way
Love is fundamentally a death of an old self that was isolated and the emergence of a new self now entangled with another self, the self that you fall in love with.
CORNEL WEST

Entangled Falling Love
John Coltrane was an addict; Billie Holiday was an addict; Eugene O’Neill was an addict. What would America be without addicts and post-addicts who make such grand contributions to our society?
CORNEL WEST

Country Holiday Our People Society
Isabel Wilkerson’s book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don’t miss it!
CORNEL WEST

Book Miss People
I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism–the idolatry of the 20th century.
CORNEL WEST

Century Form Tribalism
Hey, you got something going here. I think we’ve got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.
CORNEL WEST

Hey People Thinking
I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years “Be successful, be successful, be successful” as opposed to “Be great, be great, be great”. There’s a qualitative difference.
CORNEL WEST

Differences Successful Year
Death is always a constant possibility and probability and of course an inevitability, as well.
CORNEL WEST

Constant Possibility Probability
I don’t draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I can’t stand white supremacy. I can’t stand male supremacy. I can’t stand imperial subjugation. I can’t stand homophobia.
CORNEL WEST

People Sight White

I’m a Christian, but I’m not a puritan. I believe in pleasure and orgiastic pleasure has its place, intellectual pleasure has its place, social pleasure has its place, televisual pleasure has its place [in life].

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I’m a Christian, but I’m not a puritan. I believe in pleasure and orgiastic pleasure has its place, intellectual pleasure has its place, social pleasure has its place, televisual pleasure has its place [in life].

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Cornel West Quotes