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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
When you place a high value on truth, you have to think for yourself.
Cornel West
It's impossible to translate Wall Street greed into one or two demands.
Cornel West
There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.
Cornel West
I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That's why, for me, the issues of self-love, self-respect and self-regard are preconditions for human agency and especially black agency, given the fact that we have been and are such a hated and despised people.
Cornel West
It's fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering
Cornel West
Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats and the questions becomes what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street.
Cornel West
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
To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.
Cornel West
You can't have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.
Cornel West
I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.
Cornel West
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
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.
Cornel West
Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.
Cornel West
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
Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.
Cornel West
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
You can't move forward until you look back.
Cornel West
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
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
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
