As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

Marian Anderson (1897–1993), the celebrated African American contralto, became an international symbol of dignity in the face of racial discrimination—most famously after being barred from singing at Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall in 1939 and instead performing at the Lincoln Memorial. The sentiment in this quotation aligns with Anderson’s public reflections on prejudice during the mid-20th-century civil-rights era: she often emphasized moral self-damage to the oppressor as well as the harm done to the oppressed. While widely attributed to her in quotation collections, the line is typically presented without a precise date or occasion, suggesting it circulated as a distilled aphorism from interviews or speeches rather than a single, well-documented address.

The quote argues that oppression is self-limiting: to keep another person “down,” the oppressor must remain morally, intellectually, or spiritually “down there” as well—investing energy in control, fear, and dehumanization. Anderson frames equality not only as justice for the marginalized but as liberation for the powerful, who otherwise forfeit their own growth and “soaring.” The image of flight underscores human potential and the way prejudice constricts it. The statement’s force lies in its ethical reciprocity: it condemns discrimination without rancor, appealing instead to conscience and self-interest by showing that domination diminishes the dominator.