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The conversation with the dead is one of the great pleasures of life. Somebody who is sitting reading Chekhov, Beckett, reading Toni Morrison - you are not in any way dead, in many ways you are intensely alive.

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
Many
Conversation
Great
Sitting
Way
Dead
Toni
Life
Somebody
Morrison
Ways
Beckett
Alive
Chekhov
Pleasure
Intensely
Reading
Pleasures

More quotes by Cornel West

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The question is really how do we think seriously about this mechanism called a market. It ought to be determining not values but prices.
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Those who have never despaired have neither lived nor loved. Hope is inseparable from despair. Those of us who truly hope make despair a constant companion whom we out-wrestle every day owing to our commitment to justice, love, and hope.
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Playboy has a long history of high-quality interviews along with the objectification of women, and so I think she does have a point there. I don't think that the words are necessarily nullified. It's just that that context is something you ought to be suspicious of.
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Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook.
Cornel West
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We are a democracy and we don't believe in just hunting down gangsters and killing them. We believe in trying to find the gangsters and bring them back for trial, and give them a trial under rule of law. That's what democracies do.
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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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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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To be human you must bear witness to justice.
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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.
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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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Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture and so forth.
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Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.
Cornel West
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When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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A rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it.
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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
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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
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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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Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.
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Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.
Cornel West