Quote

I think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.

Cornel West

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
Philosophy
Experience
Different
Think
Thinking
Contexts
Life
Variety
Lived
Streets

More quotes by Cornel West

Image
American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows.
Cornel West
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
If you are always trying to do something for a cause bigger than you - connected with serving others - then it is hard to be guilty.
Cornel West
Image
Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Wealth inequality has increased.
Cornel West
Image
Try to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.
Cornel West
Image
Martin Luther King wanted to be morally consistent and speak out against various things that were wrong, not just racism.
Cornel West
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
Cornel West
Image
The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.
Cornel West
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
When you place a high value on truth, you have to think for yourself.
Cornel West
Image
I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.
Cornel West
Image
Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.
Cornel West
Image
There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.
Cornel West
Image
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