“None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)”

— Cornel West , book Race Matters

Source: Race Matters

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves…" by Cornel West?

Cornel West 28

African-American philosopher and political/civil rights act… 1953

Dean Koontz book One Door Away from Heaven

Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001), chapter 73, pp. 604, 605
Context: What will you find behind the door that is one door away from Heaven? […] If your heart is closed, then you will find behind that door nothing to light your way. But if your heart is open, you will find behind that door people who, like you, are searching, and you will find the right door together with them. None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

“The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed — and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Memorial Day speech (1963)
Context: The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed — and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves. If the white over-estimates what he has done for the Negro without the law, the Negro may under-estimate what he is doing and can do for himself with the law.

“We differ widely from each other; do we not, as circumstances change around us, moulding us like slaves to their will — do we not differ yet more from ourselves?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Literary Remains

“Every generation of Americans has come together to make our country freer, fairer, and stronger. None of us ever have or can do it alone.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

“None of us move through this world as individuals in isolation. We are all the constellations of people in our lives who believe in us, trust us, and empower us to do the work that it takes to make each moment possible.”

Michelle Wu (1985) City Councilor in Boston, Massachusetts

26 May 2022 "2022 Commencement" in BHCCBoston https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmUxxL_gFGw&t=4274s

“As human beings living in this monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves, can this society, based on competition, brutality and fear, come to an end? Not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actual fact, so that the mind is made fresh, new and innocent and can bring about a different world altogether? It can only happen, I think, if each one of us recognises the central fact that we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen to live or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world.
We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, (1969)

“This is what intimacy does to us over time. That's what a long marriage can do: It causes us to inherit and trade each other's stories. (p.237)”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“There is naught can show
A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

"The Dirge of the Sea" (April 1891)
Context: Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
Ye shall grow a part
Of the laughing Sea;
Of the moaning heart
Of the glittered wave
Of the sun-gleam's dart
In the ocean-grave. Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
For that I love
Thy heart of stone!
From the heights above
To the depths below,
Where dread things move, There is naught can show
A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!

“We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us; we must take it upon ourselves, each of us must take it upon himself.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Source: The Gift of Death

“None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Cornel West 28

Related quotes

Related topics