Cornel West Quotes

When you're feeling full of doubt and fear has got you in a bind, love will save the day.

Love is possible. Life is going to decide. Don't lose it, it's a treasure. It's going to be painful; it's going to be an adventure, a roller coaster. Life is a roller coaster and it gets worse when you get old. Contrary to what you think, that it gets better when you know more - no, the more you know the more painful it is. You've been hurt. You arrive with a million scars and your armor is not thick. The more you age, the more you're fragile. But do it anyway. Go for it. Otherwise it means death.

During the darkest periods in recent history, of course, the most subversive things you could do is think, read if you can get the material and remind yourself that love exists.

That’s what’s so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn’t matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that’s our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope.

Your life is a work of art, and in the end, the underlying theme of great art is bravery and hope and love.

I say you are a coward and you are; I think you hunt only to reassure yourself that you are not what you are: the weakest thing to ever walk the Earth. He will come for me and then we will be gone, and you will be helpless for all your hunting, because Westley and I are joined by the bond of love and you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.

She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone. Sometimes she feels frightened. Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her. But she’s brave and good-hearted and faces her life head-on.

If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.

The love of wisdom is a way of life; that is to say, it's a set of practices that have to do with mustering the courage to think critically about ourselves, society, and the world; mustering the courage to empathize; the courage, I would say, to love; the courage to have compassion with others, especially the widow and the orphan, the fatherless and the motherless, poor and working peoples, gays and lesbians, and so forth - and the courage to hope.

In a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.

I think to love bravely is the best and accept - as much as one can bear.

The brave man is not only he who overcomes the enemy, but he who is stronger than pleasures.

Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait

Falling is scary but good practice for life. We must fall. In love. Out of love. Into new experiences. Out of old habits. Deeper and further into ourselves. We must fall, life is falling over forward. The only choice we have is how we let go.

But I think this: that whatever prices I've paid, whatever sorrows I shoulder, well, I have blessings, too. Not just my family now, but the others-the ones who have died...They're with me still. They're here...

We're in a crisis. We're in a crisis like I don't think America has ever known in my lifetime. But we have to keep joy in our lives, love in our lives, poetry in our lives, dancing in our lives.

the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.

I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances – which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.

It is not those who commit the least faults who are the most holy, but those who have the greatest courage, the greatest generosity, the greatest love, who make the boldest efforts to overcome themselves, and are not immediately apprehensive about tripping.

Your heart is the size of your fist; keep loving, keep fighting.

Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all... As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.

There was something that was very manly about having the strength and having the courage to sing about love and romance. And I don't know what happened in our world where that was turned into being soft, because I don't think it's soft at all.

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

I AM VERY MOVED BY SURVIVORS. BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW TO OVERCOME A HANDICAP, A SITUATION, OR ANYTHING. VISITING THE HEARTS AND SOULS OF THOSE PEOPLE TEACHES ME A LOT ABOUT HUMANS AND HUMANITY.