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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

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Paul Robeson
Age: 77 †
Born: 1898
Born: April 9
Died: 1976
Died: January 23
Actor
American Football Player
Basketball Player
Film Actor
Lawyer
Musician
Politician
Singer
Stage Actor
Writer
Princeton
New Jersey
Paul Leroy Robeson
Humans
Washington
First
Prejudice
Time
Russia
Like
Color
Full
Felt
Firsts
Human
Mississippi

More quotes by Paul Robeson

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The intolerance of the few, or the risk of it, carries the day against the wider humanity of the many.
Paul Robeson
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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
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We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility.
Paul Robeson
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Freedom is a hard-bought thing and millions are in chains, but they strain toward the new day drawing near.
Paul Robeson
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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
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Artists are the radical voice of civilization.
Paul Robeson
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The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.
Paul Robeson
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If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it.
Paul Robeson
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The talents of an artist, small or great, are God-given. They've nothing to do with the private person they're nothing to be proud of. They're just a sacred trust... Having been given, I must give. Man shall not live by bread alone, and what the farmer does I must do. I must feed the people - with my songs.
Paul Robeson
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With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.
Paul Robeson