Black hope is not the same as the American Dream, just like let freedom ring is not the same as the bling-bling.
Dr. Cornel West
Category: Quotations
A Blues Man
A blues man always has a sad soul and a cheerful disposition, but never allows misery to have the last word.
Dr. Cornel West
He Never Confused…
Like socrates Dr. martin luther king Jr. never confused success with greatness, he never confused financial prosperity with moral magnanimity, he never confused economic security with personal integrity, he never confused professional consciousness with deep moral commitment. what an example!
Dr. Cornel West
Science as the Road to Happiness
Thus a naive optimism had led people to glorify science, or rather the techniques of mastering the problems of life based on science, as the road to happiness. but after Nietzsche’s annihilating criticism of those “last men” “who have discovered happiness,” i can probably ignore this completely. after all, who believes it–apart from some overgrown children in their professorial chairs or editorial offices?
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
Only Like a Boy
I do not know what i may appear to the world; but to myself i seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton, Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)
Success
If people advance confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavor to live the life which they have imagined, they will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
A Natural Photographer
The way i see is comparable to the way musicians hear, something extra sensory. not judgmental. i don’t differentiate between an idea of what is beautiful and what is not. what i see is a reaffirmation of the many things i need to feel. it has to do with obsessive qualities, not explainable. i am a natural photographer. it is my language, i speak through my photographs more intricately, more deeply than with words.
Dom Hélder Câmara
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
Dom Hélder Câmara
Judgement of the Young
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge
Memory Over History
There is an ancient Indian saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.
Albert Hosteen, The X Files