Cornel West Quotes

African-American music tends to have, at the very least, a glimmer of hope to it - sometimes full-fledged hope.

I don't think everything is going to get peachy ever. But I think we have to fight for what we believe in.

The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.

I'm not pessimistic, because poor people tend to bounce back. We've been through worse than this - working people been through worse than this. We've got slavery and Jim Crow. We've got workers with no rights up until '35. We're going to bounce back. We are resilient, resisting people. So, it's not pessimism, but it is blues-like. It's not optimistic. We're just prisoners of hope, that's all.

I always try to be cautiously optimistic.

Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you. Don't look back, you can never look back.

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.

Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

My dad's side of the family had lots of artists and musicians. There's an emotional, quite sentimental quality to Slavic culture. It's very open, it loves art, it loves music, it loves literature. It's very warm, it's very up, it's very down. I would celebrate that.

The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

I'm a serious optimist. I come from a country where you have little to be hopeful for, and so you have to always be an optimist.

I've gone through terrible periods of depression. But, at the core of my being, there's a strange, out-of-place optimist. Despite what I'm feeling, I'm always able to get up and do my job. Which means the world to me.

I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.

It's so much easier to count our disadvantages than tot up the mitigating circumstances that generally outweigh the despair.

I'm an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

I am someone who hopes for the best and prepares for the worst.