Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
Give
Step
May
Steps
Sustains
Live
Name
Dangerously
Nothing
Land
Stepping
Take
Names
Freely
Giving
Christian
Empire
Something
Away
Empires
Love
Keep
Honestly

More quotes by Cornel West

Image
I believe that all of us have gangster proclivities and greedy orientations that need accountability. That's why democracies are necessary. We have to have institutions to try to curtail the use of arbitrary power so that our greedy orientations and gangster-like proclivities don't get out of hand.
Cornel West
Image
For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
Cornel West
Image
To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
Cornel West
Image
We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification - be it of music, food, people, or parking meters.
Cornel West
Image
Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public
Cornel West
Image
There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.
Cornel West
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
I've been blessed, I think, to have tremendous joy in my life in pursuing my vocation, my calling.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.
Cornel West
Image
To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.
Cornel West
Image
If you are always trying to do something for a cause bigger than you - connected with serving others - then it is hard to be guilty.
Cornel West
Image
There are various forms of weaponry, intellectual weaponry, spiritual weaponry, political weaponry, economic weaponry. Because we are on the battlefield, and there are bullets flying, some symbolic, some literal and the life of the mind is a crucial place where the battle goes on.
Cornel West
Image
Success is such a relative thing for me. I'm fundamentally a Christian which means that ultimately all of the penultimate titles and things you just had to wear with a loose garment. Really.
Cornel West
Image
In situations of sparse resources along with degraded self-images and depoliticized sensibilities, one avenue for poor people is in existential rebellion and anarchic expression. The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.
Cornel West
Image
The rage is still there but I found the right kind of channel, because it's tied to a love, it's tied to a struggle for justice. And most importantly, for me, it's tied to a recognition that I am a cracked vessel.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.
Cornel West
Image
I don't believe in the elimination of evil. But I believe in fightin' against evil.
Cornel West
Image
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