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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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Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
Aren
Dark
Hope
Tell
Truth
Prisoners
Pessimistic
Blues
Prisoner

More quotes by Cornel West

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Any great artist is wrestling with their sadness and loneliness, their fears, anxieties and securities, and they're transfiguring those into complicated forms of expression that affect our hearts, minds and souls and remind us of who we are as human beings, the fragility of our human status and the inevitability of death.
Cornel West
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You have to have a habitual vision of greatness ... you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity ... believe in fact that living is connected to giving.
Cornel West
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When you are fundamentally committed to something that is right, you just decide to go down fighting. Period.
Cornel West
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The aim is not for me to be right. The aim is to make sure that we keep the focus on the people who are suffering. That's what we're here for.
Cornel West
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When you place a high value on truth, you have to think for yourself.
Cornel West
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There is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.
Cornel West
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Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people at the center.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Philosophy is in fact a quest for wisdom based in sophia that quest for wisdom has everything to do with a love of wisdom.
Cornel West
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There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.
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 don't draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I can't stand white supremacy. I can't stand male supremacy. I can't stand imperial subjugation. I can't stand homophobia.
Cornel West
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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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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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I think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.
Cornel West
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Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
Cornel West
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Martin Luther King wanted to be morally consistent and speak out against various things that were wrong, not just racism.
Cornel West
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I think anytime we talk about transforming in capitalist society, we are talking about a process not a particular event so you can't talk about a socialist revolution.
Cornel West
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If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West