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 RobesonRead
The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Leadership may shift frequently, but the essence of the people remains constant through time.
In this quote, Paul Robeson emphasizes the idea that while political leaders and their strategies can change with elections and shifts in power, the collective identity and continuity of the people endure beyond these fluctuations. This highlights the importance of the populace in shaping society, regardless of who is in charge at any given time.
Themes
LeadershipPeoplePoliticsChangeEndurance
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about political changes, you might say, 'As Paul Robeson once stated, the faces of leaders may change, but the people persist.'
More from Paul Robeson
All quotes →We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.
Paul RobesonRead
My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.
Paul RobesonRead
The intolerance of the few, or the risk of it, carries the day against the wider humanity of the many.
Paul RobesonRead
I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom
Paul RobesonRead
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 RobesonRead
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England has not wholly escaped the curse which must ever befall a free government which holds extensive provinces in subjection; for, although she has not lost her liberty or fallen into anarchy, yet we behold the population of England crushed to the earth by the superincumbent weight of debt and taxation, which may one day terminate in revolution.
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American government is like a train on a track. You have the people on the left shouting; you have the people on the right. But the train's on track. They just keep ploughing ahead.
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Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
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The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.
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