Paul Robeson Quotes

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.

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

The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.

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.

Artists are the gate keepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.

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.

We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.

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.

My future depends mostly upon myself.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Artists are the radical voice of civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Yes, I heard my people singing!-in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews-and my soul was filled with their harmonies.

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.

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.

Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.

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

Freedom is a hard-bought thing.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America.

I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom

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

The course of history can be changed but not halted.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.