Cornel West Quotes

Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people at the center.

[Martin Luther King] King was a socialist and King was an activist who was really a radical by the end.

They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are gonna poke and poke and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it. We must be - we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, "Kill all white babies."

I know my dear brother, President [Barack] Obama, has a bust of Martin King right there in the Oval Office, but the question is are is he going to be true to who that Martin Luther King, Jr., actually is? King was concerned about what? The poor. He was concerned about working people. He was concerned about quality jobs. He was concerned about quality housing. He was concerned about precious babies in Vietnam, the way we ought to be concerned about precious babies in Afghanistan and precious babies in Tel Aviv and precious babies in Gaza.

I think that for many of us, the years of the Civil Rights movements - Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy running for president in 1968 to end the war and so forth - these were defining moment in terms of trying to hold government accountable and have a level of responsibility and truth-telling.

I think that I'll always remember the bust of Dr. [Martin Luther] King. I thought having an American here who represented rhat civic spirit that got me into this [president] office was useful.

I don't call myself a white supremacist. I'm a civil rights activist concerned about European-American rights.

Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

I once did a - the first piece on Malcolm X that anyone had ever seen in the - white press.

I'll say nothing against him. At one time the whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a Communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the whites thanked the Lord for Martin Luther King.

I wanted a racially just society. I wanted to end wars. I wanted to end white supremacy. I wanted to create a world that was based on egalitarianism, sharing, racial justice.

He was a humanist then, he's a humanist now, and to my mind John Carlos is an authentic American hero.

When that devil's bullet lodged itself inside the body of Martin Luther King, he had already begun an astonishing mobilization of poor, Black, white, latino Americans who had nothing to lose. They would challenge our government to eliminate exploitative, merciless, and war-mongering policies, nationwide, or else "tie up the country" through "means of civil disobedience." Dr. King intended to organize those legions into "coercive direct actions" that would make of Babylon a dysfunctional behemoth begging for relief. Is it any wonder he was killed?

The goal of Martin Luther King is to get the Negroes to forgive the people the people who have brutalized them for four hundred years, by lulling them to sleep and making them forget what those whites have done to them, but the masses of black people today don't go for what Martin Luther King is putting down.

He [Martin Luther King Jr.] always used to say you have no choice about being born or dying. The only thing you have a choice about is what you die for.

All talks about legacies of white supremacy must be tied to empowering the lives of poor and working people as a whole. The black agenda - from Frederick Douglas to A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr, Fannie Lou Hammer to Ella Baker - has always been tied to race talk inseparable from expanding possibilities of democracy, expanding empowerment of everyday people.

When you say that [Martin Luther] King was a prophet, you don't say that he predicted anything; you say that he bore witness. He left a committed life so that people would never forget the suffering of people that he was connected to. King was prophetic because he lived a committed life. Now he did critique society, saying you're going to go under if you don't treat your poor right. I mean, that is part of prophetic calling, but it's not predicting anything.

I'm not Martin Luther King. I can't be Martin Luther King. The only thing I can do is present what I feel the essence of Martin Luther King is.

Abraham Lincoln freed the black man. In many ways, Dr. King freed the white man. How did he accomplish this tremendous feat? Where others - white and black - preached hatred, he taught the principles of love and nonviolence.

You don't disarm any white community by confining yourself to any particular method. If you want freedom, then you should get freedom like Patrick Henry said, by whatever method is necessary.

Martin Luther King was only an activist for 13 years and every year he changed and every year he became more radical. By the end he was calling for revolution. People don't know this because they go to too many prayer breakfasts on his birthday.

Of course, you have politics, the Vietnam war and all that monkey business. There are all kinds of reasons. At every one of those demonstrations in the late Sixties about the Vietnam war, you could guarantee there'd be a series of speeches. The ostensible purpose was to protest the war. But then somebody came up and gave a black power speech, usually Black Muslims, then. And then you'd have a women's rights speech. It was terrible to listen to these things.

I want to play Martin Luther King. I want to tell the real story, his demons, his struggles as a man, not just as a hero but fallible, I want to show that side.

Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.

His [Martin Luther King] last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, is a direct reference to angles, barbarism or socialism.