Cornel West Quotes & Sayings

“King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.”

“Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.”