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He who learns death unlearns slavery.

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
Unlearn
Learns
Thrive
Slavery
Death

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The important thing for me as an educator is how to - how do we unsettle the minds and touch the souls of significant numbers of young people who don't read texts or don't read my texts.
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The question is really how do we think seriously about this mechanism called a market. It ought to be determining not values but prices.
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I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.
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A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
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Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.
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You can't have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.
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I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration - joy and pain - sit side by side.
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Context shapes who you are.
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Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.
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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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To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.
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Success is such a relative thing for me. I'm fundamentally a Christian which means that ultimately all of the penultimate titles and things you just had to wear with a loose garment. Really.
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If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf.
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Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their popularity in order to tell the truth.
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This is what it is for Asians to be part of - support affirmative action, even though it may be against their interest, but they feel it's a matter of justice.
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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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For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
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When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
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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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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.
Cornel West