Cornel West Quotes

You can't move forward until you look back.

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

I like to be multi-contextual, which is much more important than being multicultural.

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.

We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.

It takes unbelievable spiritual courage, moral fortitude, to engage in militant nonviolence.

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

When you love people, you give them a priority. You have a sense of urgency about their pain.

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

When you are fundamentally committed to something that is right, you just decide to go down fighting. Period.

All individuals have the same value, not to be determined by market price. They're made in the image and likeness of God.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I try to, in my own fallible way, speak the truth.

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.

Justice is what love looks like in public.

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

You can't have a high-quality relationship without time and without trust.

Be willing to learn, because none of us know the truth

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

It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.

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

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

To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

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

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

A rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it.

You can't talk about truth unless you talk about yourself.

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

We are who we are because somebody loved us.

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

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

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