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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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Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
People
Working
Poor
Action
Doesn
Part
Problem
Affirmative
Children
Apply
Even
Though

More quotes by Cornel West

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Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That's true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.
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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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There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.
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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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I couldn't live without the genius of Stephen Sondheim, be it not just West Side Story,but Follies,Company,Sweeney Todd,Passion.You can go on and on.
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To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
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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.
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Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public
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My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.
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Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.
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Context shapes who you are.
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Wall Street is stronger than ever.
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Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.
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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.
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Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.
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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
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You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth
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There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference.
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A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
Cornel West
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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.
Cornel West