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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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I would want to conceive of philosophy as grounded in the very long humanist tradition that is the best of the West, which is open to the East and North and South.
Cornel West
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Playboy has a long history of high-quality interviews along with the objectification of women, and so I think she does have a point there. I don't think that the words are necessarily nullified. It's just that that context is something you ought to be suspicious of.
Cornel West
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There used to be corporations that produced products. Now there are just banks that produce deals, hedge-fund-driven banks and derivatives and those things.
Cornel West
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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
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It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.
Cornel West
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I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.
Cornel West
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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.
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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The black church often has reinforced certain self images that are damaging to black peoples' beauty, black peoples' confidence.
Cornel West
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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.
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.
Cornel West
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You can't move forward until you look back.
Cornel West
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Courage is being true to yourself, true to a sense of integrity.
Cornel West
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For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook.
Cornel West
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To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West