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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.

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
Beyond
Changed
Someone
Must
Disrespect
Never
Thoroughly
Pale
Therefore
Possibility

More quotes by Cornel West

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Poor people and working people have not been the focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.
Cornel West
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I was a gangster when I was young. I had a Robin Hood mentality and tended to always want to support the weak against the strong, but sometimes it was cohesive and I really needed to fall in love with the power of education to find the right venue to express my rage. I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes.
Cornel West
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In situations of sparse resources along with degraded self-images and depoliticized sensibilities, one avenue for poor people is in existential rebellion and anarchic expression. The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.
Cornel West
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I think anytime we talk about transforming in capitalist society, we are talking about a process not a particular event so you can't talk about a socialist revolution.
Cornel West
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I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.
Cornel West
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You've got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you'll be able to love others.
Cornel West
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Success is such a relative thing for me. I'm fundamentally a Christian which means that ultimately all of the penultimate titles and things you just had to wear with a loose garment. Really.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their popularity in order to tell the truth.
Cornel West
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You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit.
Cornel West
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The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.
Cornel West
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Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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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
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The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West
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So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.
Cornel West
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I like to be multi-contextual, which is much more important than being multicultural.
Cornel West