Love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it. - Cornel West

---

Black people have been working hard for decades. - Cornel West

---

If they think they have issues with the president not doing enough for the poor now, wait and see what happens if the opposition takes office. Then they would really need a poverty tour. - Cornel West

---

You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. - Cornel West

---

A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all. - Cornel West

---

Black prophetic fire is the hypersensitivity to the suffering of others that generates a righteous indignation that results in the willingness to live and die for freedom. - Cornel West

---

Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture and so forth. - Cornel West

---

We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions. - Cornel West

---

Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats and the questions becomes what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street. - Cornel West

---

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. - Cornel West

---