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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.

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
Standards
Kings
Dots
Anybody
Martin
Beyond
Luther
Takes
Connect
Understanding
Standard
Seriously
King

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There is something about boldness and fearlessness and being free enough to speak what is on one's mind that warrants freedom.
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As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.
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It's a spiritual malnutrition tied to a moral constipation, where people have a sense of what's right and what's good. It's just stuck, and they can't get it out because there's too much greed. There's too much obsession with reputation and addiction to narrow conceptions of success.
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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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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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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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For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
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Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice.
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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.
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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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A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
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Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it's spilt over for women's rights it's split over for worker's rights and so forth.
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Playboy has a long history of high-quality interviews along with the objectification of women, and so I think she does have a point there. I don't think that the words are necessarily nullified. It's just that that context is something you ought to be suspicious of.
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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.
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Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
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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.
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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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Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature.
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The problem is that in America is that the nation state has been so weak when it comes to the history of big markets the history of big business in a way so we have a very weak welfare state compared to European nation states.
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To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.
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