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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

As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.
CORNEL WEST

Certain Kind Stuff
He who learns death unlearns slavery.
CORNEL WEST

Slavery Thrive Unlearn
We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness.
CORNEL WEST

Kindness Radical Sweetness
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
You can’t have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.
CORNEL WEST

High Quality Trust Without
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
You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth
CORNEL WEST

Speak Suffering Want
Rage is fine as long as it doesn’t deteriorate into bitterness.
CORNEL WEST

Bitterness Long Rage
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
Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it’s ethically driven.
CORNEL WEST

Bitterness Driven Soul
confining life to an eternal present is an insidious form of soul murder
CORNEL WEST

Form Murder Soul
When you place a high value on truth, you have to think for yourself.
CORNEL WEST

Think Thinking Value Yourself
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
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
CORNEL WEST

Ordinary People Wake
Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.
CORNEL WEST

Culture Hip Hop Rap
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

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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