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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.

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
Refuse
Obama
Accept
Accepting
Left
Feel
Domesticated
Feels
Alternative
Way
Alternatives

More quotes by Cornel West

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You can't talk about truth without talking about learning how to die because it's precisely by learning how to die, examining yourself and transforming your old self into a better self, that you actually live more intensely and critically and abundantly.
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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.
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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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Death is always a constant possibility and probability and of course an inevitability, as well.
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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.
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Nobody in my family or in my neighborhood used the language that they used at the University of Chicago. I remember the first time I heard the word value repeated again and again by my professor. Value to me was the price of a frying pan.
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Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.
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The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.
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We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.
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There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.
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I certainly support the right of the gay brothers and sisters to come together. I believe true love can take a number of different forms. If they choose to be married that's fine, but the important thing is I hope they find love
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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.
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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.
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It would just be nice if we had leaders in Washington who could unequivocally take a stand on behalf of democratic movements in other parts of the world. And even this is true for even Brother Barack Obama.
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Education is soul crafting.
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I wished the president [Barack Obama] were more Martin Luther King-like.
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There is something about boldness and fearlessness and being free enough to speak what is on one's mind that warrants freedom.
Cornel West
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The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.
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I believe philosophy must go to school with the poets it's not either/or, it's not over or against.
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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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