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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
Elites
Exploitation
Boots
Wake
Begin
Ordinary
Subjugation
People
Subjection
Tremble

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed.
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Justice is what love looks like in public.
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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.
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A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
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The rage is still there but I found the right kind of channel, because it's tied to a love, it's tied to a struggle for justice. And most importantly, for me, it's tied to a recognition that I am a cracked vessel.
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We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification - be it of music, food, people, or parking meters.
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I wished the president [Barack Obama] were more Martin Luther King-like.
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When you are fundamentally committed to something that is right, you just decide to go down fighting. Period.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I love the academy in terms of the life of the mind and the world of ideas. I also love the streets. I love the churches and mosques and synagogues. I love the trade union centers. I love the community centers. I speak regularly at prisons and so forth.
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Life is such a mysterious thing that you are up one day you are down the next day. A lot of the homeless brothers and sisters who were a success ten years ago, they are now on the street. Maybe ten years later they will be a success, but the crucial question is what is the quality of their life.
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For most of the history of the American empire, government has been a tool for preserving and furthering the power and might of white male corporate elites.
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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.
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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.
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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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The black church often has reinforced certain self images that are damaging to black peoples' beauty, black peoples' confidence.
Cornel West