Cornel West Quotes

I couldn't live without the genius of Stephen Sondheim, be it not just West Side Story,but Follies,Company,Sweeney Todd,Passion.You can go on and on.

I wished the president [Barack Obama] were more "Martin Luther King-like."

I am not optimistic, but I've never been optimistic about humankind or America. The evidence never looks good in terms of forces for good actually becoming prominent.

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

We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.

Well technologically and so forth, it's a breakthrough, and yet [Birth of a Nation,] it's very white supremacist to the core in terms of the narrative content.

This is what it is for Asians to be part of - support affirmative action, even though it may be against their interest, but they feel it's a matter of justice.

The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.

We've got the wrong vision, the wrong values, the wrong priority, and as the great prophetic figure Marian Edelman Wright puts it, we have been AWOL when it comes to poor people and poor children.

If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble.

It's true that in reading an interview, I have a little critique of the objectification of women in a [Playboy] magazine that is perceived to doing that.

Martin Luther King was an extremist of love.

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

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration - joy and pain - sit side by side.

Isabel Wilkerson's book is a masterful narrative of the rich wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don't miss it!

For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.

Context shapes who you are.

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

Optimism is evidence-based.

Truth is fine. Absolutely.

I'm actually with the classics in general in terms of understanding truth in an existential mode. Therefore, philosophy becomes more a way of life as opposed to simply a mode of discourse.

I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.

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

We will not allow this day of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial to go without somebody going to jail.

We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people.

I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others on fire.

It's impossible to translate Wall Street greed into one or two demands.

Black people have been working hard for decades.

There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.

There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions.

There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.

Pleasure, no matter how desirable, is never innocent: it's always presupposing and assuming a certain kind of social order, one usually shot through structures of domination.

The question is really how do we think seriously about this mechanism called a market. It ought to be determining not values but prices.

I think anytime we talk about transforming in capitalist society, we are talking about a process not a particular event so you can't talk about a socialist revolution.

Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.

When black America is on the move, America is on the move.

Rage is fine as long as it doesn't deteriorate into bitterness.

If you are always trying to do something for a cause bigger than you - connected with serving others - then it is hard to be guilty.

Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

A philosopher's a lover of wisdom.

Jesus loves a free black man.

Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.

Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their popularity in order to tell the truth.

Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics?

Wall Street is stronger than ever.

American citizens have been killed abroad by drones with no due process, no accountability, no judicial review.

I was blessed to be part of a commercial, pushing for this energy bill, but we've been unsuccessful.

Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.

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