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I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself.

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
Lying
Serve
Felt
Telling
Truth
Bigger
Ennoble
Live
Lies
Empower
Many
Teaching
Exposing
Something
Willing
Bearing
Always
Called
Empowering
People
Dies
Witness

More quotes by Cornel West

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Part of the problem is we had so far to go, given the deep homophobia in our society. But, the movement is very real. The movement is very real.
Cornel West
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I love my gay brothers. I love my lesbian sisters. I love my transvestite, my gender-bending folk. For me, it's a matter of embracing their humanity, allowing them to choose in such a way that they are in the driver's seat regarding their lives.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Poor people can be greedy, too. It's just that they don't have any material resources. We need shaping of the souls as well as shaping of our institutions.
Cornel West
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We're talking about a prison-industrial complex. We're talking about a war on drugs that's generating unprecedented levels of incarcerated folk. We're talking about dilapidated housing. We're talking about joblessness and underemployment.
Cornel West
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If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.
Cornel West
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Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.
Cornel West
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Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people at the center.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.
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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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.
Cornel West
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We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.
Cornel West
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I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.
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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liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream white media. We have to accent liberty and freedom of expression and thought in all their forms.
Cornel West
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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
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The important thing for me as an educator is how to - how do we unsettle the minds and touch the souls of significant numbers of young people who don't read texts or don't read my texts.
Cornel West