Quote

If you are always trying to do something for a cause bigger than you - connected with serving others - then it is hard to be guilty.

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
Bigger
Cause
Causes
Others
Hard
Trying
Serving
Something
Guilty
Always
Connected

More quotes by Cornel West

Image
Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.
Cornel West
Image
I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.
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
Certainly Martin Luther King, in the mainstream perception of him, had a dream. Yes, he did. But the question becomes, what was that dream? It wasn't the American Dream. It was a dream that all human beings, especially poor and working people, be treated with dignity.
Cornel West
Image
Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
Cornel West
Image
To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
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.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
We can't have a freedom struggle without free choice.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
Try to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.
Cornel West
Image
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
Image
I think we must never, ever demonize one another. That's true not just black people to black people that's human being to human being.
Cornel West
Image
The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.
Cornel West
Image
You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth
Cornel West
Image
To be human you must bear witness to justice.
Cornel West
Image
You see it even in our educational systems, where the market model becomes central. It's a matter of just gaining a skill or gaining access to a job to live in some vanilla suburb, as opposed to becoming a critical citizen concerned with public interest and common good.
Cornel West
Image
Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats and the questions becomes what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street.
Cornel West
Image
Faith is stepping out on nothing and landing on something.
Cornel West