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People Quotes by Cornel West

80 People quotes by Cornel West

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Bigotry and humanity are linked in these thoughts, with a call to reject all forms of oppression. The speaker criticizes a market that treats everything as for sale and urges strong democratic pressure to help poor and working people. They also celebrate jazz as a lifelong passion that keeps ideas moving.

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When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.

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Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.

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Some people don't want to be morally consistent. They just want to be tied to their one issue.

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When you love people, you give them a priority. You have a sense of urgency about their pain.

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I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else.

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It's fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering

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Hatred of injustice is not the same thing as a love for everyday people.

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The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.

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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…

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There's a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied. There's a certain pleasure about being around people…

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Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people…

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We [Americans] have to get beyond the greed-run-amok. We have to get beyond indifference to the poor and working people. We have…

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You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people.

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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…

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The capitalist culture of consumption... does not provide meaningful sustenance for large numbers of people.

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The most important assets we have are our bodies and our energy which can be put to good use as resources in…

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So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and…

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There are different varieties and forms of capitalism. There are priorities within the capitalist society so that you can have countervailing forces…

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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…

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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…

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I think that in a certain sense, we're concerned about the same issues. How do you accent the progressive, the prophetic, those…

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A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change…

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I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That's why, for me, the issues…

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When you teach black people that they are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, and as a result you defer to the…

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As a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can…

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The American Dream is individualistic. Martin Luther King's dream was collective. The American Dream says, "I can engage in upward mobility and…

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White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the…

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And so the question becomes, what you do in the meantime? And you go - if you're forever on the move, especially…

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I think Martin Luther King would always keep track of collective insurgencies among poor and working people. He was concerned about the…

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Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things…

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I'm a Christian. I believe that greatness has to do with the quality of love shown to the least of thy brethren…

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The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this…

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Black people have been working hard for decades.

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We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification…

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Poor people can be greedy, too. It's just that they don't have any material resources. We need shaping of the souls as…

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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…

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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…

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The only countervailing force against organized money at the top, is organized people at the bottom.

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Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and…

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If you can't have a good time and smile and relate to people across race and class, then the success that you…

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More by Cornel West

There has certainly been ugly, right-wing hatred targeting Barack Obama.

What is accurately portrayed is the rich humanity not just of Martin Luther King but of the movement, which was a multiracial movement. You…

I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.'

“Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.”

“You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]”

When we think of globalization we are thinking in part of structures and institutions that have been developed over time and that have allowed…

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they…

For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.

I don't draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I can't stand…

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…

Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture and so…

The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.

You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit.

Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.