You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. — 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
