Quotes About Paul Robeson

#1. Paul Robeson was an athlete, Rutgers valedictorian, lawyer, writer, actor in movies and plays, great voice - a black male doing it all, back when some people thought he shouldn't. One reason I do all the things I do is to break stereotypes that people can only do certain things.

Dhani Jones

#2. My father was a painter. There was a lot of singing. We hung around with a lot of folk musicians. My family knew a lot of great folk musicians of the time, like Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Leadbelly. They were all people we knew.

Alan Arkin

#3. This is our home and this is our country. Beneath its soil lie bones of our fathers; for it some of them fought, bled, and died. Here we were born and here we will stay.

Paul Robeson

#4. Americans will be amazed to find ho many of the modern dance steps are relics of the African heritage.

Paul Robeson

#5. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America

Paul Robeson

#6. I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States.

Paul Robeson

#7. The patter of their feet as they walk through Jim Crow barriers to attend school is the thunder of the marching men of Joshua, and the world rocks beneath their tread.

Paul Robeson

#8. Four hundred million in India, and millions everywhere, have told you, precisely, that the colored people are not going to die for anybody: they are going to die for their independence.

Paul Robeson

#9. Films make me into some cheap turn ... You bet they'll never let me play a part in a film where a Negro is on top.

Paul Robeson

#10. We [must] realize that our future lies chiefly in our own hands.

Paul Robeson

#11. Yes, peace can and must be won, to save the world from the terrible destruction of World War III.

Paul Robeson

#12. Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause.

Paul Robeson

#13. Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples' democracies.

Paul Robeson

#14. I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world.

Paul Robeson

#15. And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union.

Paul Robeson

#16. As Americans, preserving the best of our traditions, we have the right- nay the duty-to fight for participation in the forward march of humanity

Paul Robeson

#17. The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic, but to end the injustice.

Paul Robeson

#18. Artists are the radical voice of civilization.

Paul Robeson

#19. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.

Paul Robeson

#20. As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

Paul Robeson

#21. In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

Paul Robeson

#22. I found a special eagerness among the younger, and I am sorry to say, the more intelligent Negroes, to dismiss the spiritual as something beneath their new pride in their race. It is as if they wanted to put it behind them as something to be ashamed of ...

Paul Robeson

#23. Get them to sing your song and they will want to know who you are.

Paul Robeson

#24. Through my singing and acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people's hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.

Paul Robeson

#25. If the United States and the United Nations truly want peace and security let them fulfill the hopes of the common people everywhere - let them work together to accomplish on a worldwide scale, precisely the kind of democratic association of free people which characterizes the Soviet Union today.

Paul Robeson

#26. But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.

Paul Robeson

#27. To be free ... to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life
that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands.

Paul Robeson

#28. The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery.

Paul Robeson

#29. Songs are dangerous, songs are subversive and can change your life.

Ronnie Gilbert

#30. The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people.

Paul Robeson

#31. The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land.

Paul Robeson

#32. The course of history can be changed but not halted.

Paul Robeson

#33. The talents of an artist, small or large, are God-given ... They are a sacred trust.

Paul Robeson

#34. Freedom is a hard-bought thing.

Paul Robeson

#35. I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.

Paul Robeson

#36. As Americans, preserving the best ...

Paul Robeson

#37. I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth.

Paul Robeson

#38. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. They are not-in Mississippi. They are not-in Montgomery. That is why I am here today ... You want to shut up every colored person who wants to fight for the rights of his people!.

Paul Robeson

#39. I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.

Paul Robeson

#40. Freedom is a hard-bought thing and millions are in chains, but they strain toward the new day drawing near.

Paul Robeson

#41. And at home in the United States we found continued and increased persecution, first of leaders of the Communist Party, and then of all honest anti-fascists.

Paul Robeson

#42. We ask for nothing that is not right, and herein lies the great power of our demand.

Paul Robeson

#43. Whether I am or am not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.

Paul Robeson

#44. If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it.

Paul Robeson

#45. Like any other people, like fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in every land, when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace.

Paul Robeson

#46. I feel closer to my country than ever. There is no longer a feeling of lonesome isolation. Instead-peace. I return without fearing prejudice that once bothered me ... for I know that people practice cruel bigotry in their ignorance, not maliciously

Paul Robeson

#47. Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.

Paul Robeson

#48. In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.

Paul Robeson

#49. This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.

Paul Robeson

#50. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.

Paul Robeson

#51. You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.

Paul Robeson

#52. We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility.

Paul Robeson

#53. I am truly happy that I am able to travel from time to time to the USSR the country I love above all. I always have been, I am now and will always be a loyal friend of the Soviet Union.

Paul Robeson

#54. The intolerance of the few, or the risk of it, carries the day against the wider humanity of the many.

Paul Robeson

#55. At every step the vast majority have expressed horror at the idea of an aggressive war.

Paul Robeson

#56. Through the years I have received my share of recognition for efforts in the fields of sports, the arts, the struggle for full citizenship for the Negro people, labor's rights and the fight for peace.

Paul Robeson

#57. In fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East.

Paul Robeson

#58. I've learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed ... I have sung my songs all over the world and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs as their own.

Paul Robeson

#59. Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.

Paul Robeson

#60. Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa.

Paul Robeson

#61. My future depends mostly upon myself.

Paul Robeson

#62. My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you.

Paul Robeson

#63. I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.

Paul Robeson