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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
Obama
Accept
Accepting
Left
Feel
Domesticated
Feels
Alternative
Way
Alternatives
Refuse

More quotes by Cornel West

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We are a democracy and we don't believe in just hunting down gangsters and killing them. We believe in trying to find the gangsters and bring them back for trial, and give them a trial under rule of law. That's what democracies do.
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The conversation with the dead is one of the great pleasures of life. Somebody who is sitting reading Chekhov, Beckett, reading Toni Morrison - you are not in any way dead, in many ways you are intensely alive.
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White supremacy is so deep-seated that it's hard to see it eliminated. But we could definitely push it back.
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You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth
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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.
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To get up in the morning & do the monumental tasks that face us, our labor is best fueled by love.
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Try to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.
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Courage is being true to yourself, true to a sense of integrity.
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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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I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes. It could be homophobia, it could be white supremacy, male supremacy, imperial arrogance, class subordination or whatever.
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Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
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As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.
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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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We're all vanishing organisms and disappearing creatures in space and time - that death sentence in space in time that Kafka talked about with such profundity.
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And as a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can never be reduced to anything.
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I like to be multi-contextual, which is much more important than being multicultural.
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American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows.
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When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can't get away with their abuse. They can't get away with subjection. They can't get away with subjugation. They can't get away with exploitation. They can't get away with domination. It takes courage for folk to stand up.
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I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.
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My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.
Cornel West