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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.

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
History
Empires
Power
Tool
Government
Corporate
Might
Male
Males
Furthering
Tools
Preserving
American
Elites
White
Empire

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To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.
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Black people have been working hard for decades.
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Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
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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.
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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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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.
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The most important assets we have are our bodies and our energy which can be put to good use as resources in political activism for poor and working people.
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I believe that all of us have gangster proclivities and greedy orientations that need accountability. That's why democracies are necessary. We have to have institutions to try to curtail the use of arbitrary power so that our greedy orientations and gangster-like proclivities don't get out of hand.
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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
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I don't believe in the elimination of evil. But I believe in fightin' against evil.
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Education is soul crafting.
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To get up in the morning & do the monumental tasks that face us, our labor is best fueled by love.
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It's fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering
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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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To be human you must bear witness to justice.
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But black folks have never really been optimists. We've been prisoners of hope, and hope is qualitatively different from optimism in the way that there's a difference between The Blues and Lawrence Welk. The Blues and Jazz have to do with hope while the other is sugarcoated music which has to do with sentimental optimism.
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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.
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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.
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I think nonviolence and the mediation of conflict by means of respecting civility must be promoted. But being the kind of beings we [peoplep] are - wrestling with greed, and wrestling with fears and security, anxieties, wrestling with hatred that's shot through all of us - wars are here to stay.
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The blues aren’t pessimistic. We’re prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark.
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