500 Quotes by Cornel West

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.

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.

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.

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.

Courage is the enabling virtue for any philosopher – for any human being, I think, in the end. Courage to think, courage to love, courage to hope.

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it’s constitutive of who I am.

I think, Tom Friedman is right, and I think that we have to – we have to have a serious public dialogue to try to shift public policy in that regard.

American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius – be it music, walk, style – but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows.

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.