When you place a high value on truth, you have to think for yourself.
CORNEL WESTWhen ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
More Cornel West Quotes
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We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.
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Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.
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Anytime I look at a president, I don’t care what color he is.
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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.
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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.
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He who learns death unlearns slavery.
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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.
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Rage is fine as long as it doesn’t deteriorate into bitterness.
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Being a Christian is not a political orientation for the president, but he is a centrist.
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confining life to an eternal present is an insidious form of soul murder
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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.
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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.
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We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness.
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Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it’s ethically driven.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I do believe that not just the churches but strong communities, strong trade unions, strong families can make a difference in terms of producing persons much more virtuous than what one usually finds in a gangster culture.
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You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth
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Truth is fine. Absolutely.
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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?
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You can’t have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.
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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.
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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.
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Profound music leads us beyond language…to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
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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