51 Cornel West Quotes

Cornel West is a renowned American personality with a lot of wisdom.

Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, an author, a social activist, a Harvard professor, public intellectual, social critic, and spoken-word artist. He has written 30 books and three spoken word albums.

Cornel West held professorships at Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Union Theological Seminary, and the University of Paris during his career. Cornel West is a true inspiration and an achiever who showed there is no limit to exploring talent. These quotes only remind people of his abilities.

Famous Cornel West Quotes

These famous Cornel West quotes are an inspiration for young people and can add some motivation to your life. It can also help people see the good even if they are in deep trouble. Here are some famous Cornel West quotes.

“To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.”

- 'Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life'.

“Each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.”

- 'Race Matters'.

“Homophobia is very, very difficult to root out, to extricate. That’s why we have to bear witness. That’s why we have to be so public about it, and that’s why we can’t just play footsie with it.”

“I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.”

“I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from ‘gangster’ to ‘redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.”

“I have nothing against rich brothers and sisters. Pray for ’em every day. But callousness and indifference, greed and avarice is something that’s shot through all of us.”

- March 20, 2016, www.cbsnews.com, James Brown.

“If the Kingdom of God is in you, you should leave a little bit of heaven wherever you go.”

“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.”

“Music at its best… is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us – beyond language – to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence. ”

- 'The Cornel West Reader'.

“There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.”

"Black people have been working hard for decades."

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

“We have to recognize that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment unless there is loyalty unless there is love, patience, persistence.”

-'Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life'.

Cornel West Quotes On Life

These Cornel West quotes on life seem to be right out of influential books, just like his speech covered by Democracy Matters, an American non-profit. Here are some Cornel West quotes about his perspective on life.

“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.”

-'Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life'.

“Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.”

“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.”

“We are who we are because somebody loved us.”

“I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.”

-'The Cornel West Reader'.

“Believe in the fact that living is connected to giving.”

“I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That’s why, for me, the issues of self-love, self-respect, and self-regard are preconditions for human agency and especially black agency, given the fact that we have been and are such a hated and despised people.”

-1995, LA Times.

“We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness, and radicals for tenderness”

Cornel West Quotes On Justice

These Cornel West quotes on justice explore multiple perspectives on the topic. Here are some Cornel West quotes regarding his perspective on justice.

“Fire really means a certain kind of burning in the soul that one can no longer tolerate when one is pushed against a wall.”

“I don’t draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I can’t stand white supremacy. I can’t stand male supremacy. I can’t stand imperial subjugation. I can’t stand homophobia.”

“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.”

-'Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life'.

“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."

-'The Rich And The Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto'.

“It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice.”

-'Black Prophetic Fire'.

“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.”

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

“Patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.”

-'Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life'.

“We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice.”

“When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.”

-'Hope On A Tightrope: Words And Wisdom'.

“Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be 'white'– they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.”

-'Race Matters'.

“You must let suffering speak if you want to hear the truth.”

Encouraging Cornel West Quotes

Every quote by West is encouraging, but we have segregated a portion to highlight some. Motivate yourself with these encouraging Cornel west quotes.

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

“I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism–the idolatry of the 20th century.”

“I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others on fire.”

“I would want to conceive of philosophy as grounded in the very long humanist tradition that is the best of the West, which is open to the East and North and South.”

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

“It’s no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect, and self-love.”

“None of us alone can save the nation or world.”

-’Race Matters’.

“The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration.”

“There is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others.”

-’Black Prophetic Fire’.

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

“To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that which shows what it might become.”

“To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.”

-'Restoring Hope: Conversations On The Future of Black America', G K Hall & Company, 1998.

“We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

- 2013.

“You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people.”

-'Hope On A Tightrope: Words And Wisdom'.

“You can’t really move forward until you look back.”

-Panel discussion on Remaking America.

“You have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity.”

“You have to have a habitual vision of greatness.”

“You won’t confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won’t confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity.”

"'Be successful, be successful, be successful' as opposed to 'Be great, be great, be great'. There's a qualitative difference."

- October 1, 2004, Democracy Matters, San Francisco.