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Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.

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
People
Justice
Truth
Substantial
Young
Folk
Enough
Superficial
Many
Addiction
Things
Philosopher
Love
Conviction
Like
Folks

More quotes by Cornel West

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You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth
Cornel West
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But black folks have never really been optimists. We've been prisoners of hope, and hope is qualitatively different from optimism in the way that there's a difference between The Blues and Lawrence Welk. The Blues and Jazz have to do with hope while the other is sugarcoated music which has to do with sentimental optimism.
Cornel West
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I'm actually with the classics in general in terms of understanding truth in an existential mode. Therefore, philosophy becomes more a way of life as opposed to simply a mode of discourse.
Cornel West
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Rage is fine as long as it doesn't deteriorate into bitterness.
Cornel West
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As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.
Cornel West
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The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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The blues aren’t pessimistic. We’re prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark.
Cornel West
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The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.
Cornel West
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Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it's spilt over for women's rights it's split over for worker's rights and so forth.
Cornel West
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If you are always trying to do something for a cause bigger than you - connected with serving others - then it is hard to be guilty.
Cornel West
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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
Cornel West
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The legacy of [Martin Luther] King is the very thing that must be expanded if America is to be free and democratic in the 21st century. It's just as simple as that.
Cornel West
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To get up in the morning & do the monumental tasks that face us, our labor is best fueled by love.
Cornel West
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liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream white media. We have to accent liberty and freedom of expression and thought in all their forms.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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I think nonviolence and the mediation of conflict by means of respecting civility must be promoted. But being the kind of beings we [peoplep] are - wrestling with greed, and wrestling with fears and security, anxieties, wrestling with hatred that's shot through all of us - wars are here to stay.
Cornel West
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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
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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.
Cornel West
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He who learns death unlearns slavery.
Cornel West