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Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

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
Term
Courageously
Living
Decently
Means
Fundamentally
Come
Manner
Mean
Forth
Trying
Terms
Life
Philosophy
Wise
Compassionately

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We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
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Martin Luther King was an extremist of love.
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There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.
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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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So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and human beings. And that is a deep moral and spiritual issue, which can of course be backed up by Civil Rights Commissions which enforce the laws against any form of discrimination.
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Pleasure, no matter how desirable, is never innocent: it's always presupposing and assuming a certain kind of social order, one usually shot through structures of domination.
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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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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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I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.
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Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.
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It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage, to think for yourself, to examine yourself.
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I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes. It could be homophobia, it could be white supremacy, male supremacy, imperial arrogance, class subordination or whatever.
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A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
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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.
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I've been blessed, I think, to have tremendous joy in my life in pursuing my vocation, my calling.
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The evil is so ubiquitous in terms of objectification of all of us, that one can say that almost about any TV and even radio show.
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It's fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering
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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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There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.
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To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.
Cornel West