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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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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.
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The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people.
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Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause.
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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.
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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.
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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!.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Freedom is a hard-bought thing.
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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.
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We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.
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The talents of an artist, small or large, are God-given... They are a sacred trust.
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You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.
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