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We want an economic team, Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner, Joseph Steiglitz's people and others, who say, you know what? We're sophisticated economists but we're concerned about 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
Concerned
Team
Economic
Economists
Working
Joseph
Poor
Robert
Others
Economist
People
Sophisticated
Paul

More quotes by Cornel West

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For most of the history of the American empire, government has been a tool for preserving and furthering the power and might of white male corporate elites.
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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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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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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We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
Cornel West
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We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property, it doesn't leave a whole lot of time for non-market values and non-market activity so that love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Christians got a lot of work to do. But, the spirit of Dorothy Day is alive. Martin Luther King is still alive. Malcolm X and the prophetic Islamic tradition is still alive. We can't lose sight of those prophetic religious folk who, even given their kin in the same tradition, says, you all are wrong on this, but we're still in the same tradition.
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 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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Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.
Cornel West
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Poor people can be greedy, too. It's just that they don't have any material resources. We need shaping of the souls as well as shaping of our institutions.
Cornel West
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We’re beings toward death, we’re … two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions.
Cornel West
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Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.
Cornel West
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The only countervailing force against organized money at the top, is organized people at the bottom.
Cornel West
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You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth
Cornel West