In that chocolate side of town, in my blessed city of Sacramento, California - that was beginning of my death shudders, that's why Kierkegaard and Kafka began to make sense to me when I was very, very young - that radical sense fragility of life and inevitability of death; those trucks coming, if the truck came at a same time I was on the bridge, I was in the creek -my body would be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.
Cornel WestOne is that I am a regular, everyday person, you know what I mean. I feel that wherever I am, I really am.
Cornel WestI have a whole lot of fun in trying to serve others and just keeping it funky, trying to keep it real, trying to ensure that we are able to be ourselves and get beyond these deodorized discourses and deodorized spaces that put on masks.
Cornel WestOne of the things I love most about Martin Luther King is that he was willing to sacrifice his popularity in favor of his integrity. He was an honest man, and he would tell the truth.
Cornel WestI think philosophy is all about lived experience, which is to say life in the streets, life in a variety of different contexts.
Cornel WestI'm praying for Barack Obama to stay on the tightrope because I want to fight his right-wing critics. I want to down I want to ensure they don't lie about him. I'm sure they don't demonize him, and too much of that is going on. So I don't want my critiques to be in any way confused with the right-wing critiques, even though I'll fight for the right wing to be wrong in that regard.
Cornel West