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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
Optimist
Prisoner
Hope
Cannot

More quotes by Cornel West

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Barack Obama has domesticated the left in such a way that we feel as if we have no alternative but him...I refuse to accept that.
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To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.
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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.
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Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.
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The black church often has reinforced certain self images that are damaging to black peoples' beauty, black peoples' confidence.
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As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.
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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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For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.
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Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public
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The aim is not for me to be right. The aim is to make sure that we keep the focus on the people who are suffering. That's what we're here for.
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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.
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what I think separates me from most philosophers probably is that I'm a bluesman in the life of the mind, I'm a jazzman in the world of ideas.
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Life is such a mysterious thing that you are up one day you are down the next day. A lot of the homeless brothers and sisters who were a success ten years ago, they are now on the street. Maybe ten years later they will be a success, but the crucial question is what is the quality of their life.
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I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others on fire.
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It's true that in reading an interview, I have a little critique of the objectification of women in a [Playboy] magazine that is perceived to doing that.
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Those who have never despaired have neither lived nor loved. Hope is inseparable from despair. Those of us who truly hope make despair a constant companion whom we out-wrestle every day owing to our commitment to justice, love, and hope.
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Philosophy is in fact a quest for wisdom based in sophia that quest for wisdom has everything to do with a love of wisdom.
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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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We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed.
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I wished the president [Barack Obama] were more Martin Luther King-like.
Cornel West