Cornel West

You got what 30% of now black Brothers saying they going to vote for Gangster. Trump M hey where is that coming from.

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

To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.

The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom—not cause or origin—of our imperial meltdown.

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.

The Democratic Party is beyond redemption at this point when it comes to seriously speaking to the needs of poor and working people…

It's like a Weimar America.

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.

To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status.

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.

We are experiencing the sad gangsterization of America — an unbridled grasp at power, wealth and status.

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.

We live in a moment in which there is a courage deficit. People want to be popular and comfortable. They don't have the courage to tell the truth.

We've got to get beyond the ways in which the political system has been colonized by corporate wealth and by monied elite.

Does being downtrodden make us spiritual again? WEST: I don't think it's just a matter of the material conditions; it's a matter of the choices that we make.

Obama was a Rockefeller Republican in blackface.

I'm a bluesman in the academy. I sing the blues, but I do it with footnotes.

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.

I'm a jazzman, a bluesman, a revolutionary Christian. I'm a mess, but I'm a beautiful mess.

To be a Christian is to be a prisoner of hope.