Cornel West Quotes About Struggle

Quotes about: Struggle

• The country is in deep trouble. We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. 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. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

  Cornel West

  Life, Country, Patience

• To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies.

  Cornel West

  Struggle, Unique, Profound

• 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.

  Cornel West

  Morning, Struggle, Recovery

  bell hooks, Cornel West (2016). “Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life”, p.125, Taylor & Francis

• 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)

  Cornel West

  Struggle, Class, White

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

  Cornel West

  Morning, Struggle, Recovery

  Bell Hooks, Cornel West (1991). “Breaking bread: insurgent Black intellectual life”, South End Pr

• Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook.

  Cornel West

  Struggle, Past, Alternatives

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

  Cornel West

  Struggle, Choices, Free Choice

  Source: www.pbs.org

• We look at the legacy of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, Malcolm X and Martin King. We have, and part of the struggle now in the age of [Barack] Obama is how do we keep alive the legacy of Martin King?

  Cornel West

  Kings, Struggle, Age

  "Cornel West Reconsiders President Obama". "Talk of the Nation" with Tony Cox, www.npr.org. August 2, 2010.

• The rage is still there but I found the right kind of channel, because it's tied to a love, it's tied to a struggle for justice. And most importantly, for me, it's tied to a recognition that I am a cracked vessel.

  Cornel West

  Struggle, Justice, Recognition

  "Cornel West, 'Living And Loving Out Loud'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. October 29, 2009.

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