A Quote by Cornel West

I tend to be one who just speaks from my soul, and so what comes out sometimes is rather harsh. In that sense, I'm very much a part of the tradition of a Frederick Douglass or a Malcolm X who used hyperbolic language at times to bring attention to the state of emergency.

Cornel West

Quote Topics

Attention Bring Emergency Frederick Douglas Harsh Just Language Malcolm Much My Soul Out Part Rather Sense Sometimes Soul Speaks State Tend Times Tradition Used Very

Quote Author

Cornel West
American - Educator
Born: June 2, 1953

We look at the legacy of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, Malcolm X and Martin King. We have, and part of the struggle now in the age of [Barack] Obama is how do we keep alive the legacy of Martin King?

Cornel West

The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.

Ferdinand de Saussure

Mark Twain married the daughter of one of New York State's leading Abolitionists, Jervis Langdon, who helped Frederick Douglass who became the great Negro leader to escape from slavery.

Hal Holbrook

Really, doesn´t everything make sense? There are, of course, things from which we more or less recover, although some of them are too harsh even for saints. But that is no reason to accuse God. Even if there are reasons to doubt him, the fact that he did not arrange the world like a well-ordered parlor is not one of them. It speaks rather in his favor. This used to be much better understood.

Ernst Junger

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'

Maya Angelou

Frederick Buechner brings the reader to his knees, sometimes in laughter, sometimes in an astonishment very close to prayer, and at the best of times in a combination of both.

Michael Mewshaw

My dad always associated information with liberation. He was very much in that Malcolm X tradition.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Abolition seemed a fantasy when Frederick Douglass called for all slaves to be released.

Clint Smith

You came so that you could learn about your dreams," said the old woman. "And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand.

Paulo Coelho

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity.

Barack Obama

I have a sense of respect: respect for my suppliers, respect for the staff, respect for the customer - as long as they respect us. When we have a customer who is playing a provocative, disrespectful game, then we just prefer to just throw him out, rather than deal with it. Some people, sometimes, are unhappy themselves. And that can really create a frustrating performance to us and to the staff and all that. I don't throw customers out as much as I used to. In the old days, "You don't like it? Get out!" I'm much nicer now.

Daniel Boulud

Growing up, I read all three of Frederick Douglass' autobiographies by the time I was 12.

Michael Tubbs

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

Robert Fitzgerald

Frederick Douglass had to teach himself how to read before standing up to defeat slavery.

Juan Williams

Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too. Even with the best intentions, language misused, language used stupidly, carelessly, brutally, language used wrongly, breeds lies, half-truths, confusion. In that sense you can say that grammar is morality. And it is in that sense that I say a writer's first duty is to use language well.