Cornel West Quotes

Corporations gorged with profit ... menace the stability of society.

We have had a continuing problem of the equality of wealth and the power that goes with it. There are other ways of curtailing the power of corporations…. Congress is at fault for not requiring full disclosure of political contributions… Speech is the last thing we should be curtailing.

Nobody deserves this much money - certainly not an actor.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.

I have no political ax to grind; I just find it absurd that huge billion-dollar corporations can take over elections. I just find it insane that, for instance, we give tax breaks to people like myself making millions of dollars, while there're no tax breaks for working people. That, to me, is not a political issue, that's a life issue.

They will stop at nothing to enrich the power of Corporations

Selfish men, and this country is not without them, men whose mounting bankrolls loom larger than your happiness, corporations without souls and without virtue, those fearful that this government might impinge on what they have grown to regard as its immemorial right of exploitation will whisper against us. They will call us radicals. They will say that this is the first step on the road to socialism.

The power of groups of men organized by incorporation ... or of small knots of rich men acting in combination has developed with unexpected strength in unexpected ways, overshadowing individuals and even communities, and showing that the very freedom of association which men sought to secure by law when they were threatened by the violence of the potentates may, under the shelter of law, ripen into a new form of tyranny.

If work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of the country.

There are corporations worth billions of dollars—and hundreds of thousands of people who don't get to eat.

The Republican Party is the open and avowed handmaiden of the trusts.

One party is under the ironclad control of Wall Street and the other one caters to Wall Street.

We’d be crazy to let corporations get anywhere near our government. The only reason they want to influence government is to plunder—to steal from children.

Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socioeconomic ploys — legally enacted game-playing — agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socioeconomic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members.

Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.

Throughout history, rich nations have gotten to the future first. Their companies can afford to equip their tinkerers and visionaries with the most advanced materials, instruments and knowledge.

Throughout our history - and that of the world - it's always come down to the friction between the haves and have-nots or between the average Joes and the large corporations. So that's a recurring theme in my work.

Top 1 Percent progressivism emphasizes the idea of fairness - but it's nevertheless a politics of outrage, animated by at least a trace of envy. It's as if 'millionaires and billionaires' were the principal problem facing America today.

The corporate takeover of America pre-dates Trump and it will outlast him. This president has revealed the rot of America. He has made it worse. It will take more than ousting him to fix it.

The institution of private property... is undergoing, at this time, a strain never put on it before. Not because the corporation, in essence, is retrogressive or unrepublican, but because in fact, it is unrepublican, and for that reason retrogressive also.

Americans are not getting screwed by the Republican Party. They're getting screwed by the large corporations that bought and own the Republican Party.

I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic.

The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories in Rupert Murdoch's empire and rightwing talk radio, and corporate media have their back.

In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties.