Top 250 Cornel West Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “We had a much deeper sense of community in ’67 than we do in ’97. This is important to say that not in a nostalgic way because it’s not as if ’67 was a time when things were so good.”

— Cornel West

152. “When it comes to our precious poor children of all colors, maybe disproportionally in percentage black and white and red, but all colors, yellow as well as white, we need to push toward integrated schools.”

— Cornel West

153. “Why I can’t stand this phrase about I don’t have any permanent enemies, any permanent friends, only permanent interests. I can’t stand that. It’s a matter of principles. What kind of integrity, what kind of morality do you have?”

— Cornel West

154. “For most of the history of the American empire, government has been a tool for preserving and furthering the power and might of white male corporate elites...”

— Cornel West

155. “If you view life as a gold rush, you’re going to end up worshiping a golden calf.”

— Cornel West

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

— Cornel West

157. “When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can’t get away with their abuse. They can’t get away with subjection. They can’t get away with subjugation. They can’t get away with exploitation. They can’t get away with domination. It takes courage for folk to stand up.”

— Cornel West

158. “To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely – to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.”

— Cornel West

159. “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.”

— Cornel West

160. “There’s no doubt that many of the mainstream white institutions tend to be cosmetic and symbolic when it comes to including African-Americans, whereas we black folk tend to be much more sensitive about embracing others, and we have a long history of that.”

— Cornel West

161. “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.”

— Cornel West

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

— Cornel West

163. “Drew Dellinger is one of the most creative, courageous and prophetic poets of his generation. I love his spirit. Don’t miss him!”

— Cornel West

164. “The most important assets we have are our bodies and our energy which can be put to good use as resources in political activism for poor and working people.”

— Cornel West

165. “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.”

— Cornel West

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

— Cornel West

167. “The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak – that gives it an existential emphasis.”

— Cornel West

168. “The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom – not cause or origin – of our imperial meltdown. Trump is neither alien nor extraneous to American culture and history. In fact, he is as American as apple pie. Yet he is a sign of our spiritual bankruptcy – all spectacle and no substance, all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and greed and no wisdom and maturity.”

— Cornel West

169. “There’s simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.”

— Cornel West

170. “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.”

— Cornel West

171. “A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what’s best for all.”

— Cornel West

172. “A philosopher’s a lover of wisdom.”

— Cornel West

173. “I had a passion and love of learning and wisdom that was inseparable from a love of music and the arts. I’ve never viewed them in any way as being separable.”

— Cornel West

174. “Our politicians have sacrificed their principles on the altar of special interests; our corporate leaders have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of profits; and our media watchdogs have sacrificed the voice of dissent on the altar of audience competition.”

— Cornel West

175. “We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed.”

— Cornel West

176. “We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

— Cornel West

177. “The problem is that in America is that the nation state has been so weak when it comes to the history of big markets the history of big business in a way so we have a very weak welfare state compared to European nation states.”

— Cornel West

178. “We need serious strategic and tactical thinking about how to create new models of leadership and forge the kind of persons to actualize these models.”

— Cornel West

179. “In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. – Aristotle.”

— Cornel West

180. “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.”

— Cornel West

181. “Black people have been working hard for decades.”

— Cornel West

182. “It’s true that you might be socially isolated because you’re reading in the library, at home and so on, but you’re intensely alive. In fact you’re much more alive than these folk walking the streets of New York in crowds, with no intellectual interrogation and questioning going at all.”

— Cornel West

183. “You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit.”

— Cornel West

184. “I’m not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.”

— Cornel West

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

— Cornel West

186. “My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.”

— Cornel West

187. “Poor people and working people have not been the focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.”

— Cornel West

188. “I think that when we talk about education I was also blessed to talk with my dear brother Arne Duncan. I had never met him, the secretary of Education. We had a wonderful talk. And I had told him quite explicitly education is a right, it’s not a race to the top.”

— Cornel West

189. “Anytime I look at a president, I don’t care what color he is.”

— Cornel West

190. “If you can’t have a good time and smile and relate to people across race and class, then the success that you have ultimately is just sounding brass and tinkling symbol.”

— Cornel West

191. “Hatred of injustice is not the same thing as a love for everyday people.”

— Cornel West

192. “The women can always choose the patriarchal models, and you end up with a Margaret Thatcher.”

— Cornel West

193. “It’s no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect and self-love.”

— Cornel West

194. “You can’t talk about truth unless you talk about yourself.”

— Cornel West

195. “I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.”

— Cornel West

196. “To be a Christian – a follower of Jesus Christ – is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom.”

— Cornel West

197. “The important thing for me as an educator is how to – how do we unsettle the minds and touch the souls of significant numbers of young people who don’t read texts or don’t read my texts.”

— Cornel West

198. “There’s a number of hip-hop artists who are highly talented but politically retrograde.”

— Cornel West

199. “I don’t know of a great artist who did not sacrifice and thereby have to wrestle with the depths of loneliness and sadness.”

— Cornel West

200. “To be humble is to be so sure of one’s self and one’s mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one’s self and status.”

— Cornel West