To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status. And, even mor… - Cornel West

To be humble is to be so sure of one’s self and one’s mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one’s self and status.

Too many young folk have addiction to superficial things and not enough conviction for substantial things like justice, truth and love.

In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation — and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.

The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, and the condition of being the truth is to transform your suffering with great creativity and compassion into forms and deeds that empower others to do likewise in their own ways.