The blues aren’t pessimistic. We’re prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak - that gives it an existential emphasis. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I'm actually with the classics in general in terms of understanding truth in an existential mode. Therefore, philosophy becomes more a way… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I've never been tied to one party or one candidate or even one institution. And that's true even with one church as… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, it means then that if you have a prophetic sensibility, you are… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
One of the things I love most about Martin Luther King is that he was willing to sacrifice his popularity in favor… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
You can't talk about truth without talking about learning how to die because it's precisely by learning how to die, examining yourself… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The condition of truth, is to allow suffering to speak. Which means attend to suffering of the least of these, of the… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Greatness is telling the truth & being courageous in pursuit of justice. The worst thing you could tell young people is to… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
What is accurately portrayed is the rich humanity not just of Martin Luther King but of the movement, which was a multiracial movement. You… — Cornel West Copy Share
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.' — Cornel West Copy Share
“Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.” — Cornel West Copy Share
“You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]” — Cornel West Copy Share
When we think of globalization we are thinking in part of structures and institutions that have been developed over time and that have allowed… — Cornel West Copy Share
The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace. — Cornel West Copy Share
The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they… — Cornel West Copy Share
For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo. — Cornel West Copy Share
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… — Cornel West Copy Share
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… — Cornel West Copy Share
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… — Cornel West Copy Share
You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit. — Cornel West Copy Share
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 Copy Share
