Quotes from Cornel West

Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one's feelings of self-worth and one's capacity to be a political agent.

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.

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)

White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, their culture is less civilized, and their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples.

We're beings toward death, we're featherless, two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms. That's us.

None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)

You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]

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

I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration- joy and pain sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.

It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!

liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream white media. We have to accent liberty and freedom of expression and thought in all their forms.

Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.

It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage, to think for yourself, to examine yourself.

Courage is being true to yourself, true to a sense of integrity.

The courage to be is the most difficult thing for any human being.

It takes unbelievable spiritual courage, moral fortitude, to engage in militant nonviolence.

He who learns death unlearns slavery.

Death is always a constant possibility and probability and of course an inevitability, as well.

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

Education is soul crafting.

The powerful have no monopoly on greed, hatred, fear, or ignorance.

As long as you're scared you're on the plantation.

We can't have a freedom struggle without free choice.