Cornel West
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald Westis an American philosopher, academic, social activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The son of a Baptist minister, West received his undergraduate education from Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1973, and received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1980, becoming the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He taught at Harvard in 2001 before leaving the school after a highly publicized dispute...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth2 June 1953
CountryUnited States of America
And as a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can never be reduced to anything.
All you have is a gift a to give.
The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak - that gives it an existential emphasis.
When you love people, you give them a priority. You have a sense of urgency about their pain.
The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.
The problem is we need much more moral content.
If they think they have issues with the president not doing enough for the poor now, wait and see what happens if the opposition takes office. Then they would really need a poverty tour.
I'm not a pacifist at all; I think there is a notion of "just war" that can be persuasively argued. I think in the face of Nazis, in the face of apartheid, that I would have joined those armies. But that's the last, last resort.
I think nonviolence and the mediation of conflict by means of respecting civility must be promoted. But being the kind of beings we [peoplep] are - wrestling with greed, and wrestling with fears and security, anxieties, wrestling with hatred that's shot through all of us - wars are here to stay.
I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.
There's a difference between just gaining access to a commodity as opposed to a spirit that allows us to live a life of love and justice, that when crisis and catastrophe hits you, that the biggest mansion in the world is not going to help you. If you don't have anybody who loves you, if you don't have any God who cares for you, that you're not going to have what it takes to move to the next stage in your life.
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.
As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.
If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf.