Cornel West quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Cornel West

Cornel West Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Cornel West on Wise Famous Quotes.

Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.

There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.

It's fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering

We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people.

We can't have a freedom struggle without free choice.

You can't move forward until you look back.

Profound music leads us beyond language ... to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.

We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness.

To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.

One is that I am a regular, everyday person, you know what I mean. I feel that wherever I am, I really am.

Be willing to learn, because none of us know the truth

We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed.

To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status.

There's a number of hip-hop artists who are highly talented but politically retrograde.

There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.

Part of the problem is we had so far to go, given the deep homophobia in our society. But, the movement is very real. The movement is very real.

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

Part of the challenge of the Barack Obama campaign was to try to neutralize that white backlash, and of course, he was masterful in doing that.

When black America is on the move, America is on the move.

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)

You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit.

As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.

Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.

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.

Love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it.

Philosophy is in fact a quest for wisdom based in sophia; that quest for wisdom has everything to do with a love of wisdom.

The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.

There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.

What I think separates me from most philosophers probably is that I'm a bluesman in the life of the mind, I'm a jazzman in the world of ideas.

If the Kingdom of God is in you, you should leave a little bit of heaven wherever you go.

Try to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.

The only countervailing force against organized money at the top, is organized people at the bottom.

I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else.

A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.

I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.

None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am.

Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.

Black people have been working hard for decades.

We have to be self-critical even in context that we might be critical of, even as we - our pieces appear in it.

Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.

To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.

I think we must never, ever demonize one another. That's true not just black people to black people; that's human being to human being.

Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.

You can't talk about truth unless you talk about yourself.

I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.

Fantasies are real. They have effects on your soul, even though, as I was too young to really step forward.

The problem is we need much more moral content.

I like to be multi-contextual, which is much more important than being multicultural.

The women can always choose the patriarchal models, and you end up with a Margaret Thatcher.

There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions.

I couldn't live without the genius of Stephen Sondheim, be it not just West Side Story,but Follies,Company,Sweeney Todd,Passion.You can go on and on.

The capitalist culture of consumption ... does not provide meaningful sustenance for large numbers of people.

Drew Dellinger is one of the most creative, courageous and prophetic poets of his generation. I love his spirit. Don't miss him!

We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.

And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.

He who learns death unlearns slavery.

We are who we are because somebody loved us.

Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice.

Confining life to an eternal present is an insidious form of soul murder

Death is always a constant possibility and probability and of course an inevitability, as well.

All you have is a gift a to give.

No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.

You've got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you'll be able to love others.

Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.

Rage is fine as long as it doesn't deteriorate into bitterness.

I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

Being a Christian is not a political orientation for the president, but he is a centrist.

The courage to be is the most difficult thing for any human being.

Education is soul crafting.

The blues aren't pessimistic. We're prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark.

You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people.

When you are fundamentally committed to something that is right, you just decide to go down fighting. Period.

We will not allow this day of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial to go without somebody going to jail.

The evil is so ubiquitous in terms of objectification of all of us, that one can say that almost about any TV and even radio show.

The black church often has reinforced certain self images that are damaging to black peoples' beauty, black peoples' confidence.

Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense.

Anytime I look at a president, I don't care what color he is.

Isabel Wilkerson's book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don't miss it!

The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.

If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf.

I believe philosophy must go to school with the poets; it's not either/or, it's not over or against.

There is something about boldness and fearlessness and being free enough to speak what is on one's mind that warrants freedom.

I think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.

I've been blessed, I think, to have tremendous joy in my life in pursuing my vocation, my calling.

Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.

Truth is fine. Absolutely.

Courage is the enabling virtue for any philosopher - for any human being, I think, in the end. Courage to think, courage to love, courage to hope.

It's no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect and self-love.

I think, Tom Friedman is right, and I think that we have to - we have to have a serious public dialogue to try to shift public policy in that regard.

A philosopher's a lover of wisdom.

I'm sure I've had my phone tapped for years, I don't think it's a crime against humanity they just ought to quit doing it, god damn it.

I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism
the idolatry of the 20th century.

Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.

I don't know of a great artist who did not sacrifice and thereby have to wrestle with the depths of loneliness and sadness.

The aim is not for me to be right. The aim is to make sure that we keep the focus on the people who are suffering. That's what we're here for.

It's impossible to translate Wall Street greed into one or two demands.

Hatred of injustice is not the same thing as a love for everyday people.

We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions.