Cornel West Quotes

There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.

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.

Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public

Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.

Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.

None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)

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

We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.

We are who we are because somebody loved us.

A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.

The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, it means then that if you have a prophetic sensibility, you are committed to loving others and if you love others, you hate injustice.

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.

Justice is what love looks like in public.

You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth

If the Kingdom of God is in you, you should leave a little bit of heaven wherever you go.

To get up in the morning & do the monumental tasks that face us, our labor is best fueled by love.

To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.

It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage, to think for yourself, to examine yourself.

Courage is being true to yourself, true to a sense of integrity.

The blues aren’t pessimistic. We’re prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark.

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

Music is what we need when language fails us, but we cannot remain silent.

I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism--the idolatry of the 20th century.

We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness.

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

You don't begin by dehumanizing those who are dehumanizing you, because it contributes to the cycle of dehumanization in the world.

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.

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

We are intent on building a movement. The next step is grassroots town meetings. We must keep alive the dialogue around the covenants.

You keep folks so intimidated. You can give them money, access, but they're still scared. And as long as you're scared, you're on the plantation.

White supremacy is so deep-seated that it's hard to see it eliminated. But we could definitely push it back.

Patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.

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

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.

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.

There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.

No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.

Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.

Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice.

We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification - be it of music, food, people, or parking meters.

Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)

It is very difficult to sustain a high-quality relationship that has the kind of mutual intensity, that has a kind of mutual respect, without putting in time.

The black agenda, from Frederick Douglas to Ida B. Wells to Martin King, has always been the most broad, deep, inclusive, embracing agenda of the nation.

We have to be self-critical even in context that we might be critical of, even as we - our pieces appear in it.

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 that.

You can't move forward until you look back.

One of the things I love most about Martin Luther King is that he was willing to sacrifice his popularity in favor of his integrity. He was an honest man, and he would tell the truth.

There's a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied. There's a certain pleasure about being around people who enact a playfulness when it comes to the world of ideas.

And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.