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There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions.

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
Action
Always
Interplay
Institutional
Delicate
Actions
Conditions
Individual

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Wealth inequality has increased.
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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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Jesus loves a free black man.
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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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Barack Obama has domesticated the left in such a way that we feel as if we have no alternative but him...I refuse to accept that.
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We're all vanishing organisms and disappearing creatures in space and time - that death sentence in space in time that Kafka talked about with such profundity.
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For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
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To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.
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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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We want an economic team, Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner, Joseph Steiglitz's people and others, who say, you know what? We're sophisticated economists but we're concerned about poor and working people.
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Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense.
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The important thing for me as an educator is how to - how do we unsettle the minds and touch the souls of significant numbers of young people who don't read texts or don't read my texts.
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I like to be multi-contextual, which is much more important than being multicultural.
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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.
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For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.
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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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If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble.
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The aim is not for me to be right. The aim is to make sure that we keep the focus on the people who are suffering. That's what we're here for.
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We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed.
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We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
Cornel West