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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
Tell
Truth
Prisoners
Pessimistic
Blues
Prisoner
Aren
Dark
Hope

More quotes by 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.
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Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
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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.
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Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.
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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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There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.
Cornel West
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A rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it.
Cornel West
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I think we must never, ever demonize one another. That's true not just black people to black people that's human being to human being.
Cornel West
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Certainly Martin Luther King, in the mainstream perception of him, had a dream. Yes, he did. But the question becomes, what was that dream? It wasn't the American Dream. It was a dream that all human beings, especially poor and working people, be treated with dignity.
Cornel West
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I've been blessed, I think, to have tremendous joy in my life in pursuing my vocation, my calling.
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.
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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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I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself.
Cornel West
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Jesus loves a free black man.
Cornel West
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We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property, it doesn't leave a whole lot of time for non-market values and non-market activity so that love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it.
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 music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
Cornel West
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I do believe that not just the churches but strong communities, strong trade unions, strong families can make a difference in terms of producing persons much more virtuous than what one usually finds in a gangster culture.
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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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