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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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Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
Actually
Terms
Truth
General
Way
Therefore
Life
Becomes
Classics
Simply
Existential
Philosophy
Mode
Term
Discourse
Understanding
Opposed

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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.
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I like to be multi-contextual, which is much more important than being multicultural.
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I don't draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I can't stand white supremacy. I can't stand male supremacy. I can't stand imperial subjugation. I can't stand homophobia.
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Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.
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Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.
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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.
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This is what it is for Asians to be part of - support affirmative action, even though it may be against their interest, but they feel it's a matter of justice.
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You keep folks so intimidated. You can give them money, access, but they're still scared. And as long as you're scared, you're on the plantation.
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My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.
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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.
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Martin Luther King was an extremist of love.
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Any great artist is wrestling with their sadness and loneliness, their fears, anxieties and securities, and they're transfiguring those into complicated forms of expression that affect our hearts, minds and souls and remind us of who we are as human beings, the fragility of our human status and the inevitability of death.
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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.
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Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it's spilt over for women's rights it's split over for worker's rights and so forth.
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There are various forms of weaponry, intellectual weaponry, spiritual weaponry, political weaponry, economic weaponry. Because we are on the battlefield, and there are bullets flying, some symbolic, some literal and the life of the mind is a crucial place where the battle goes on.
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I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.
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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.
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It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.
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I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.
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There is something about boldness and fearlessness and being free enough to speak what is on one's mind that warrants freedom.
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