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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.

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
Law
Gangsters
Give
Trial
Back
Hunting
Find
Trials
Giving
Killing
Trying
Rule
Believe
Democracy
Bring
Democracies

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Context shapes who you are.
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Martin Luther King wanted to be morally consistent and speak out against various things that were wrong, not just racism.
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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.
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You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit.
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Poor people and working people have not been the focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.
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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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There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.
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The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.
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Pleasure, no matter how desirable, is never innocent: it's always presupposing and assuming a certain kind of social order, one usually shot through structures of domination.
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There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.
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You can't have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.
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We've been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It's been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.
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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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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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Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.
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I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.
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You've got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you'll be able to love others.
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Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.
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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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In the practice of radical love, you are embracing human beings across the board, but you do give a preference - very much like Jesus - to the least of these, to the weak, to the vulnerable. That includes poor whites and poor browns, as well as the poor in black ghettos.
Cornel West