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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.

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
Thing
Freedom
Respecting
Means
Powers
Black
Loving
Running
Gonna
Persons
Road
Person
Dangerous
Self
Society
Mean
American

More quotes by Cornel West

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You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit.
Cornel West
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When you love poor people THAT MUCH, when you love 'working people' THAT MUCH, that makes you the freest man/woman in the country. - Cornel West in explaining that Obama is A fulfillment of MLK's dream not THE fulfillment of MLK's dream
Cornel West
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Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
Cornel West
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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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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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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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I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.
Cornel West
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As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.
Cornel West
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Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.
Cornel West
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Philosophy is in fact a quest for wisdom based in sophia that quest for wisdom has everything to do with a love of wisdom.
Cornel West
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To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.
Cornel West
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If the churches don't move, much of the community won't move. We've got a situation in which a black church is still a major institution in the black community where 55 percent of the black folk attend and over 75 pass through its doors.
Cornel West
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Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.
Cornel West
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It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage, to think for yourself, to examine yourself.
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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And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.
Cornel West
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I couldn't live without the genius of Stephen Sondheim, be it not just West Side Story,but Follies,Company,Sweeney Todd,Passion.You can go on and on.
Cornel West
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You see it even in our educational systems, where the market model becomes central. It's a matter of just gaining a skill or gaining access to a job to live in some vanilla suburb, as opposed to becoming a critical citizen concerned with public interest and common good.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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When you are fundamentally committed to something that is right, you just decide to go down fighting. Period.
Cornel West