When you love people, you give them a priority. You have a sense of urgency about their pain. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Hatred of injustice is not the same thing as a love for everyday people. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people. — 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
Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
We [Americans] have to get beyond the greed-run-amok. We have to get beyond indifference to the poor and working people. We have… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Poor people can be greedy, too. It's just that they don't have any material resources. We need shaping of the souls as… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The aim is not for me to be right. The aim is to make sure that we keep the focus on the… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I think we must never, ever demonize one another. That's true not just black people to black people; that's human being to… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
If you can't have a good time and smile and relate to people across race and class, then the success that you… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I think that in a certain sense, we're concerned about the same issues. How do you accent the progressive, the prophetic, those… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness,… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can't get away with their abuse. They can't get… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Certainly Martin Luther King, in the mainstream perception of him, had a dream. Yes, he did. But the question becomes, what was… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
It's just that the churches have been sleeping for a long time. A lot of people argue that the churches are even… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
As a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The American Dream is individualistic. Martin Luther King's dream was collective. The American Dream says, "I can engage in upward mobility and… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
And so the question becomes, what you do in the meantime? And you go - if you're forever on the move, especially… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I think Martin Luther King would always keep track of collective insurgencies among poor and working people. He was concerned about the… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I know my dear brother, President [Barack] Obama, has a bust of Martin King right there in the Oval Office, but the… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I'm not pessimistic, because poor people tend to bounce back. We've been through worse than this - working people been through worse… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
We've been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It's been over 200… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture… — 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
I don't draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
We want an economic team, Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner, Joseph Steiglitz's people and others, who say, you know what? We're sophisticated… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Martin Luther King would celebrate the symbolic status (of having a black president), but he would examine what the real substance was.… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
In a time in which Communist regimes have been rightfully discredited and yet alternatives to neoliberal capitalist societies are unwisely dismissed, I… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
There has certainly been ugly, right-wing hatred targeting Barack Obama. — 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 Image
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.' — Cornel West Copy Share Image
“Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.” — Cornel West Copy Share Image
“You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]” — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
![“We [Americans] have to get beyond the greed-run-amok. We have to get beyond indifference to the poor and working people. We have to get beyond polarized politics.” quote by Cornel West](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/655/cornel-west-708_greed_we-americans-have-to-get-beyond-the-gree_384791.jpg)
![“I know my dear brother, President [Barack] Obama, has a bust of Martin King right there in the Oval Office, but the question is are is he going to be true to who that Martin Luther King, Jr., actually is? King was concerned about what? The poor. He was concerned about working people. He was…” quote by Cornel West](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/6cd/cornel-west-708_afghanistan_i-know-my-dear-brother-president-barack_792715.jpg)
![“You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]” quote by Cornel West](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/273/cornel-west-708_george-w_you-can-t-really-move-forward-until-you_37313.jpg)
