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We had a much deeper sense of community in '67 than we do in '97. This is important to say that not in a nostalgic way because it's not as if '67 was a time when things were so good.

Cornel West

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Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
Time
Deeper
Community
Sense
Important
Much
Way
Good
Things
Nostalgic

More quotes by Cornel West

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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.
Cornel West
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I don't believe in the elimination of evil. But I believe in fightin' against evil.
Cornel West
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I think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.
Cornel West
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To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
Cornel West
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You can't move forward until you look back.
Cornel West
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I was a gangster when I was young. I had a Robin Hood mentality and tended to always want to support the weak against the strong, but sometimes it was cohesive and I really needed to fall in love with the power of education to find the right venue to express my rage. I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes.
Cornel West
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To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.
Cornel West
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When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
Cornel West
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Martin Luther King wanted to be morally consistent and speak out against various things that were wrong, not just racism.
Cornel West
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He who learns death unlearns slavery.
Cornel West
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Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.
Cornel West
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You see it even in our educational systems, where the market model becomes central. It's a matter of just gaining a skill or gaining access to a job to live in some vanilla suburb, as opposed to becoming a critical citizen concerned with public interest and common good.
Cornel West
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It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage, to think for yourself, to examine yourself.
Cornel West
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I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself.
Cornel West
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But black folks have never really been optimists. We've been prisoners of hope, and hope is qualitatively different from optimism in the way that there's a difference between The Blues and Lawrence Welk. The Blues and Jazz have to do with hope while the other is sugarcoated music which has to do with sentimental optimism.
Cornel West
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Certainly Martin Luther King, in the mainstream perception of him, had a dream. Yes, he did. But the question becomes, what was that dream? It wasn't the American Dream. It was a dream that all human beings, especially poor and working people, be treated with dignity.
Cornel West
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In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: there must be countervailing forces that defend people's needs against the brutality of profit driven capitalism.
Cornel West
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I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.
Cornel West
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Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.
Cornel West
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Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
Cornel West