Quote

Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.

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
Bitterness
Righteous
Driven
Anger
Soul
Devours
Ethically
Indignation
Morally

More quotes by Cornel West

Image
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
Image
A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all.
Cornel West
Image
Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public
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
Sometime you just need to be silent, have a drink and crack a smile or somethin', because the human condition, in general, is just overwhelming in so many ways.
Cornel West
Image
I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years Be successful, be successful, be successful as opposed to Be great, be great, be great. There's a qualitative difference.
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
There's a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied. There's a certain pleasure about being around people who enact a playfulness when it comes to the world of ideas.
Cornel West
Image
Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.
Cornel West
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.
Cornel West
Image
The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.
Cornel West
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
In the practice of radical love, you are embracing human beings across the board, but you do give a preference - very much like Jesus - to the least of these, to the weak, to the vulnerable. That includes poor whites and poor browns, as well as the poor in black ghettos.
Cornel West
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification - be it of music, food, people, or parking meters.
Cornel West
Image
The women can always choose the patriarchal models, and you end up with a Margaret Thatcher.
Cornel West
Image
To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
Cornel West