Paul Robeson quotes

" Against this background the jealousy of the protagonist becomes more credible, the blows to his pride more understandable, the final collapse of his personal, individual world more inevitable. but beyond the personal tragedy , the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievabilty(sic)of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and scared values-all these suggest the shattering of a universe. " # Technology # Love # Jealousy

" The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice i had no alternative. the history of the capsulize era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of there lands, their true culture destroyed...denied equal protection of the law, and deprived their rightful place in the respect of their fellows. " # Freedom # Politicians and Politics # Culture

" 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 s something to be ashamed of..." " # Race and Racism # Love # Pride

" For the first time since I began acting, I feel that I've found my place in the world, that there's something out of my own culture which i can express and perhaps help others preserve..i have found out now that the African natives had a definite culture a long way beyond the culture of the Stone age...an integrated thing, which is still unspoiled by western influences...I think the Americans will be amazed to find how many of the modern dance steps are relics of African heritage. Robeson, Susan. Paul Robeson, The Whole World in His Hands pg72(1981) " # Color # Age and Aging # Love

" I was deeply fascinating to watch how strikingly American audiences from coast to coast found Shakespeare's Othello painfully immediate in it's unfolding of evil, innocence, passion, dignity and nobility and contemporary in it's overtones of a clash of cultures, of the partial acceptance of and a consequent effect upon, one of a minority group. " # Technology # Minorities # Writers and Writing

" One does not need a very long racial memory to loose on oneself in such a part...As I act, civilization falls away from me. My plight becomes real, the horrors terrible facts. I feel the terror of the slave mart, the degradation of man bought and sold into slavery. Well I am the son of an emancipated slave and the stories of old father are vivid in my table of memory. " # Money # Slavery # Feminism

" 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. " # Travel and Tourism # Freedom # Body

" 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. " # Information # Peace # Freedom

" 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. " # Friends and Friendship # Love # Happiness

" From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot! It is the government's duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand, and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here. This is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government. " # Age and Aging # Government # Freedom