500 Quotes by Cornel West

Anytime two human beings find genuine pleasure, joy, and love, the stars smile and the universe is enriched.

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.

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.

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

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.

I think we must never, ever demonize one another. That’s true not just black people to black people; that’s human being to human being.

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.

We must not allow our elected officials -many beholden to unaccountable corporate elites- to bastardize and pulverize the precious word democracy as they fail to respect and act on genuine democratic ideals.

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. And, even more pointedly, to be humble is to revel in the accomplishments or potentials of others – especially those with whom one identifies and to whom one is linked organically.