Cornel West Quotes

The soul of the poorest child is of equal dignity with the soul of Adam.

Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an 'It.' This is so because each and every human being - you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner - is precious.

All people have dignity. There's nobody who was born without a soul and a spirit.

I think that whether someone is a Christian or not, the idea that a human life has dignity and intrinsic worth should be clear enough.

Each being is sacred - meaning that each has inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being.

All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe.

Because they are children and for no other reason they have dignity and worth simply because they are.

Nobody is just anything... everyone is of equal value, regardless of their station

Every sentient being values her/his life even if no one else does. That is what is meant by saying that the lives of all have inherent value.

Everybody is worth everything.

Every person needs to feel significant. We want our lives to count. We yearn to believe that in some way we are important and that hunger for significance-a drive as intense as our need for oxygen-doesn't come from pride or ego. It comes from God because he wants each of us to understand how important we are. ... We must seek our roots, our origin, and our destiny so that we can know our present value. ..... ...We can help each other realize that we are persons of significance being made in the image of God.

I'm a human being, god-dammit. My life has value!

Every human life is a reflection of divinity, and... every act of injustice mars and defaces the image of God in man.

Things have a price and can be for sale. But people have a dignity that is priceless and worth far more than things.

There is no dichotomy between man and God's image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image.

None of us come to this earth to gain our worth; we brought it with us.

You will always have value and nothing can change that.

Our search for such [moral] principles can start with . . . the unconditional imperative to acknowledge every person as a person. If we ask for the contents given by this absolute, we find, first, something negative-the command not to treat a person as a thing. This seems little, but it is much. It is the core of the principle of justice.

You are valuable because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done - but simply because you are.

The peaker learns surely and certainly that life can be worthwhile, that it can be beautiful and valuable. There are ends in life, i.e., experiences which are so precious in themselves as to prove that not everything is a means to some end other than itself.

We are not to look to what men in themselves deserve but to attend to the image of God which exists in all and to which we owe all honor and love.

For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value of any of them is that they bear the image of the king.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing.

We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God

...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.