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I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration - joy and pain - sit side by side.

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
Moving
Blues
America
Celebration
World
Planet
Planets
Joy
Side
Plantations
Sides
Soaked
Pain
Catastrophe

More quotes by Cornel West

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I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years Be successful, be successful, be successful as opposed to Be great, be great, be great. There's a qualitative difference.
Cornel West
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There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.
Cornel West
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I certainly support the right of the gay brothers and sisters to come together. I believe true love can take a number of different forms. If they choose to be married that's fine, but the important thing is I hope they find love
Cornel West
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I wished the president [Barack Obama] were more Martin Luther King-like.
Cornel West
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So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.
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
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Black people have been working hard for decades.
Cornel West
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Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice.
Cornel West
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I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.
Cornel West
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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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Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.
Cornel West
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Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Rage is fine as long as it doesn't deteriorate into bitterness.
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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There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions.
Cornel West
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As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.
Cornel West
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The women can always choose the patriarchal models, and you end up with a Margaret Thatcher.
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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The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.
Cornel West