You have to have a habitual vision of greatness – you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity – believe in fact that living is connected to giving.
About this quote
- Attributed to
- Cornel West
- Published in
- Whispering Sages: From Their Mouths To Your Ears
- Attribution status
- As published
Photo: Scotch Mist · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source · Portrait: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America (CC BY-SA 2.0)
What would change if you lived this for one week?
Write one sentence in your journal about what this means to you.
Join to journal, save & shareCreate a share imageWatch & listen
Mahatma Gandhi's Speech (Unedited Voice)
MLK - A Knock at Midnight
"We Shall Overcome" - Martin Luther King, Jr.
More from Cornel West & related wisdom
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can't get away with their abuse. They can't get away with subjection. They can't get away with subjugation. They can't get away with exploitation. They can't get away with domination. It takes courage for folk to stand up.
… Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.
You can pray until you faint, but if you don’t get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.