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I wished the president [Barack Obama] were more Martin Luther King-like.

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
President
Like
Wished
Martin
Luther
King
Obama
Kings

More quotes by 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.
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I think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.
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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.
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Martin Luther King's legacy is never to be measured by bricks and mortar, but rather by the kind of lives that we live, and the kind of love and service that we render.
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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.
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I would want to conceive of philosophy as grounded in the very long humanist tradition that is the best of the West, which is open to the East and North and South.
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The evil is so ubiquitous in terms of objectification of all of us, that one can say that almost about any TV and even radio show.
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We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.
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In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I defend the fundamental claim of Marxist theory: there must be countervailing forces that defend people's needs against the brutality of profit driven capitalism.
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I believe that all of us have gangster proclivities and greedy orientations that need accountability. That's why democracies are necessary. We have to have institutions to try to curtail the use of arbitrary power so that our greedy orientations and gangster-like proclivities don't get out of hand.
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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.
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If the churches don't move, much of the community won't move. We've got a situation in which a black church is still a major institution in the black community where 55 percent of the black folk attend and over 75 pass through its doors.
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Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.
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We can't have a freedom struggle without free choice.
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The only countervailing force against organized money at the top, is organized people at the bottom.
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Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.
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He who learns death unlearns slavery.
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I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.
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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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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.
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