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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.

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
Something
Hey
Think
Progressive
Thinking
Policy
People
Working
Chance
Poor
Actually
Going
Focuses

More quotes by Cornel West

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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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Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.
Cornel West
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There is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.
Cornel West
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Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.
Cornel West
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Any great artist is wrestling with their sadness and loneliness, their fears, anxieties and securities, and they're transfiguring those into complicated forms of expression that affect our hearts, minds and souls and remind us of who we are as human beings, the fragility of our human status and the inevitability of death.
Cornel West
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We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed.
Cornel West
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I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others on fire.
Cornel West
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I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes. It could be homophobia, it could be white supremacy, male supremacy, imperial arrogance, class subordination or whatever.
Cornel West
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For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.
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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As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.
Cornel West
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I like to be multi-contextual, which is much more important than being multicultural.
Cornel West
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It's a spiritual malnutrition tied to a moral constipation, where people have a sense of what's right and what's good. It's just stuck, and they can't get it out because there's too much greed. There's too much obsession with reputation and addiction to narrow conceptions of success.
Cornel West
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A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Context shapes who you are.
Cornel West
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For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
Cornel West
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The problem is that in America is that the nation state has been so weak when it comes to the history of big markets the history of big business in a way so we have a very weak welfare state compared to European nation states.
Cornel West
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I think nonviolence and the mediation of conflict by means of respecting civility must be promoted. But being the kind of beings we [peoplep] are - wrestling with greed, and wrestling with fears and security, anxieties, wrestling with hatred that's shot through all of us - wars are here to stay.
Cornel West
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Try to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.
Cornel West