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I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.

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
Prisoner
Hope
Cannot
Optimist

More quotes by Cornel West

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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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I don't believe in the elimination of evil. But I believe in fightin' against evil.
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You keep folks so intimidated. You can give them money, access, but they're still scared. And as long as you're scared, you're on the plantation.
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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.
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And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.
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None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)
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If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble.
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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.
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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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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.
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When you are fundamentally committed to something that is right, you just decide to go down fighting. Period.
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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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Context shapes who you are.
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.
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To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that which shows what it might become. America -- this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of 'no' into the 'yes' -- needs citizens who love it enough to re-imagine and re-make it.
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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.
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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.
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Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it's spilt over for women's rights it's split over for worker's rights and so forth.
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To be human you must bear witness to justice.
Cornel West
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So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.
Cornel West