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" If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf. And when you call for help, and that golden calf can't respond, you go under. "

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" When you teach black people that they are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, and as a result you defer to the white supremacist status quo, you rationalize your accommodation to the status quo, you lose your fire, you become much more tied to producing foliage, what appears to be the case. "

Cornel West

Black

People

Beautiful

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

" We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people. "

" Now, myself, I'm not a pacifist at all. I believe in just war. I would have joined the spirit of the nation to fight against apartheid. "

" 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. "

" And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you. "

" Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people. "

" 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. "

" I'm an old Coltrane disciple just like I'm a Christian. "

Cornel West

Just

Old

" I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself. I had a passion and love of learning and wisdom that was inseparable from a love of music and the arts. "

" There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference. "

" Black prophetic fire is the hypersensitivity to the suffering of others that generates a righteous indignation that results in the willingness to live and die for freedom. "

" I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft. "

" 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. "

" The problem is we need much more moral content. "

Cornel West

Need

Problem

" There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions. But there is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility. "

" Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture and so forth. "

" 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. "

" You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. "

" Neofascism in the United States takes the form of big money, big banks, big corporations, tied to xenophobic scapegoating of the vulnerable, like Mexicans and Muslims and women and black folk, and militaristic policies abroad, with strongman, charismatic, autocratic personality, and that's what Donald Trump is. "

Cornel West

Women

Black

" Martin Luther King Jr. was not just a man of peace. He was a radical pacifist, and so he was against war across the board. "

" When you socially neglect a people, when you economically abandon a people, when you transfer wealth from them to the well-to-do, what are a people going to do? They're going to respond with very sad forms of despair, and that's true for everybody - I don't care what color you are. "

" 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. "

" A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth. "

" Love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it. "

" Black people have been working hard for decades. "

" There is something about boldness and fearlessness and being free enough to speak what is on one's mind that warrants freedom. "

" Part of the popularity with Louis Farrakhan has less to do with the content of his message and more to do with the form that he portrays himself - as being a free black person who speaks what is on his mind with boldness and fearlessness. Who is willing to pay the consequences. "

" Anytime I look at a president, I don't care what color he is. "

" I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.' "