Top 40 Paul Robeson Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

3. “My future depends mostly upon myself.”

— Paul Robeson

4. “Artists are the radical voice of civilization.”

— Paul Robeson

5. “I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.”

— Paul Robeson

6. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

8. “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

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

— Paul Robeson

10. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

11. “We ask for nothing that is not right, and herein lies the great power of our demand.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

13. “The course of history can be changed but not halted.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

15. “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

16. “The man who accepts Western values absolutely, finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions; and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living, and, in chronic cases, to take his own life.”

— Paul Robeson

17. “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

18. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

19. “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

20. “Every artist, every scientist, every writer must decide now where he stands. The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.”

— Paul Robeson

21. “I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa’s material wealth.”

— Paul Robeson

22. “The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery.”

— Paul Robeson

23. “Freedom is a hard-bought thing.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

25. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

27. “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

28. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

34. “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

35. “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

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

— Paul Robeson

37. “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

38. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

39. “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

40. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

43. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

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

— Paul Robeson

45. “But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people.”

— Paul Robeson

46. “As Americans, preserving the best...”

— Paul Robeson

47. “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.”

— Paul Robeson

48. “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.”

— Paul Robeson