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When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.

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
Begin
Ordinary
Subjugation
People
Subjection
Tremble
Elites
Exploitation
Boots
Wake

More quotes by Cornel West

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The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.
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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.
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There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.
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We want an economic team, Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner, Joseph Steiglitz's people and others, who say, you know what? We're sophisticated economists but we're concerned about poor and working people.
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The interesting thing for me is, if that had been a left-wing person raising questions, [President Obama] probably would have expressed his anger. Because Obama really does get upset about progressives.
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You can't move forward until you look back.
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We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions.
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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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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.
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Anytime I look at a president, I don't care what color he is.
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To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.
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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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If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble.
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I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.
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In situations of sparse resources along with degraded self-images and depoliticized sensibilities, one avenue for poor people is in existential rebellion and anarchic expression. The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.
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To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.
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It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage, to think for yourself, to examine yourself.
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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.
Cornel West
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The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.
Cornel West
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I recall coming across a line by the late Charles Tilly when he said, The conditions for the possibility of social movements have been called into question in the twenty-first century. And I said to myself, my god, a society in history without social movements, for me, is very difficult to live in.
Cornel West