Cornel West Quotes

One of the goals of analysis is you become your own analyst. You continue the process even if you're not in therapy, whether you continue the process by walking down the street thinking about things or whether you continue the process, as I do, by writing about them.

Observe all men, thyself most.

A lot of so-called Christian souls are not fine. People need to look inside themselves and look at the lives they're leading and fix themselves before they try to fix other people.

I have never been clever enough - or egotistical enough to spend 300 pages dipping into the sludge of my own subconscious.

Here's the thing: The book that will most change your life is the book you write.

All my writing has been an effort to sort out the paradoxes of my life.

You need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and not come away thinking, "Hey, there's something wrong with this mirror."

Many of us knock on the door but remain outside, because knocking and entering are entirely different actions. Knocking is necessary, consisting of reading books, attending meetings, asking questions. But entrance requires much bolder action. It requires one to enter into himself, to uncover hidden motives, to see contradictions, and to realize his actual power for self-change.

In a lot of senses, things are definitely changing in my life, and with what's going on around me. But I still feel like the writing process is as intimate as it as before, if not more. Because I need my time more than I had before.

Teaching and writing are separate, but serve/feed one another in so many ways. Writing travels the road inward, teaching, the road out - helping OTHERS move inward - it is an honor to be with others in the spirit of writing and encouragement.

In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves.

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.

When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all... Knowing yourself and knowing the facts, you can judge whether you can change the situation so it is more to your liking. If you cannot--or if you do not know how to improve on things--then discipline yourself to the adjustments that will be necessary.

Because until we write it down, we don't know what is actually at the root of our lives.

One writes not to be read but to breathe...one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes--in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer--you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'.

More than my questions about the efficacy of social actions were my questions about my own motives. Do i want social justice for the oppressed or do i jusy want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I dont have to watch the evening news to see the world is bad, i only have to look at myself. I am not brow beating here, i am only saying that true charge , true living giving, God honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem i had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I am the problem

Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.

There’s nothing more humbling than seeing your best quotes in a list, and thinking they could have been written by a coma patient with a keyboard and spasms.

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains.

A satyagrahi turns the searchlight inward relentlessly to weed out all the defects that may be lying hidden there still.

After all, without understanding yourself, what basis have you for right thinking?

I think sometimes I get carried away, like I'm speaking to an imaginary audience rather than just trying to figure something out for myself. Ideally, I try to balance that - that I'm asking these questions of myself, how does this work, why does this happen, what's going on here.

When I look back on my life-and an extraordinary transformation is happening again to me right now - I describe it as my “point of observation” is moving. It is moving because my range of frequencies I am accessing is becoming greater. It’s not because I’m something special because anyone can do it.

We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves.