19 quotes
I am the son of an emancipated slave and the stories of old father are vivid on the tablets of my memory.
If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it.
Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause.
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.
The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.
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.
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 : The Whole World in His Hands (1981)
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.
You are the non-patriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
But beyond the personal tragedy, the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievability of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and sacred values — all these suggest the shattering of a universe.
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. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?
I am here because I am opposing the Neo-Fascist cause, which I see arising here in these committees.
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.
Thoughts on Winning the Stalin Peace Prize (1953)
I found it very offensive to my people. It makes the Negro childlike and innocent and is in the old plantation hallelujah shouter tradition... the same old story, the negro singing his way to glory.
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...
Vast quantities of U.S. bombers, tanks and guns have been sent against Ho Chi Minh and his freedom-fighters; and now we are told that soon it will be 'advisable' to send America GI's into Indo-China in order that the tin, rubber and tungsten of Southeast Asia be kept by the "free world"-meaning white Imperialism.
Paul Robeson Speaks (1978)
Pablo Neruda of Chile, one of the world’s greatest poets..Martin Anderson Nexo, the greatest modern Danish humanist...Rev. James Endicott, fearless Canadian minister and fighter for peace...
Thoughts on Winning the Stalin Peace Prize (1953)
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 : I Want to Make Freedom Ring (2008)
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.