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To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.

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
Step
Give
Steps
Sustains
May
Name
Dangerously
Live
Land
Stepping
Nothing
Names
Freely
Take
Christian
Empire
Giving
Away
Empires
Something
Honestly
Love
Keep

More quotes by Cornel West

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Anytime I look at a president, I don't care what color he is.
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So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and human beings. And that is a deep moral and spiritual issue, which can of course be backed up by Civil Rights Commissions which enforce the laws against any form of discrimination.
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Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.
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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.
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Martin Luther King's legacy is never to be measured by bricks and mortar, but rather by the kind of lives that we live, and the kind of love and service that we render.
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Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That's true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.
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To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.
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I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.
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Sometime you just need to be silent, have a drink and crack a smile or somethin', because the human condition, in general, is just overwhelming in so many ways.
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There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.
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I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That's why, for me, the issues of self-love, self-respect and self-regard are preconditions for human agency and especially black agency, given the fact that we have been and are such a hated and despised people.
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Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture and so forth.
Cornel West
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Truth is fine. Absolutely.
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.
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A rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it.
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The important thing for me as an educator is how to - how do we unsettle the minds and touch the souls of significant numbers of young people who don't read texts or don't read my texts.
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You can't move forward until you look back.
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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.
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Martin King was fundamentally committed to the least of these [poor, working people]. Of course, he was a Christian soldier for justice from the 25th chapter of Matthew.
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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