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Frederick Douglas’s agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it’s spilt over for women’s rights; it’s split over for worker’s rights and so forth.

Cornel West

I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.
CORNEL WEST

Idea Men Wise
We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
CORNEL WEST

Buying Pleasure Selling
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
Truth is fine. Absolutely.
CORNEL WEST

Absolute Fine Truth
We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.
CORNEL WEST

Inspirational Loyalty Relationship
I certainly support the right of the gay brothers and sisters to come together. I believe true love can take a number of different forms. If they choose to be married that’s fine, but the important thing is I hope they find love
CORNEL WEST

Believe Brother Gay
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
CORNEL WEST

Ordinary People Wake
We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness.
CORNEL WEST

Kindness Radical Sweetness
It’s true that in reading an interview, I have a little critique of the objectification of women in a [Playboy] magazine that is perceived to doing that.
CORNEL WEST

Littles Magazine Reading
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
Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)
CORNEL WEST

Democracy Majority Rights
You can’t have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.
CORNEL WEST

High Quality Trust Without
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
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
Going all the way back to Jeremiah Wright and Tavis Smiley and Van Jones and even Shirley Sherrod and maybe even Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel. We’re going to see what his [Barack Obama] response is.
CORNEL WEST

Smiley Water Way
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
Anytime I look at a president, I don’t care what color he is.
CORNEL WEST

Color Looks President
Profound music leads us beyond language…to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
CORNEL WEST

Dark Profound Root
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
Interrogate yours hidden assumptions
CORNEL WEST

Assumption Hidden Interrogate
I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism–the idolatry of the 20th century.
CORNEL WEST

Century Form Tribalism
Frederick Douglas’s agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it’s spilt over for women’s rights; it’s split over for worker’s rights and so forth.
CORNEL WEST

Country People Rights
Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.
CORNEL WEST

Jazz Music Need
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
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
Martin Luther King’s legacy is never to be measured by bricks and mortar, but rather by the kind of lives that we live, and the kind of love and service that we render.
CORNEL WEST

Brick Kings Legacy Mortar
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

Frederick Douglas’s agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it’s spilt over for women’s rights; it’s split over for worker’s rights and so forth.

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Frederick Douglas’s agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it’s spilt over for women’s rights; it’s split over for worker’s rights and so forth.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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