Langston Hughes famous quotes

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
-- Langston Hughes

#Inspirational #Artist #Black History

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.
-- Langston Hughes

#Freedom #Rocks #Toes

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
-- Langston Hughes

#Summer #Rain #Humor

America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!
-- Langston Hughes

#America #Oath #Swear

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
-- Langston Hughes

#Life #Determination #Want

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?
-- Langston Hughes

#Love #Dream #Sun

I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.
-- Langston Hughes

#Freedom #People #Bread

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
-- Langston Hughes

#Sleep #Thinking #Drink

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
-- Langston Hughes

#Love #Inspirational #Broken Heart

Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven.
-- Langston Hughes

#Fall #Love Is #People

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.
-- Langston Hughes

#Life #Music #Inspire

I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
-- Langston Hughes

#Mean #Political #Democracy

We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
-- Langston Hughes

#Color #Racism #Poetry

Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.
-- Langston Hughes

#Mean #Dying #Littles

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
-- Langston Hughes

#Happiness #Laughter #Humor

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.
-- Langston Hughes

#Beautiful #Brother #Strong

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #Running #Sweet

I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.
-- Langston Hughes

#Thinking #Rivers

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
-- Langston Hughes

#Rivers #Soul

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.
-- Langston Hughes

#Poet

What happens to a dream deferred?
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.
-- Langston Hughes

#Beer #Likes #Whiskey

To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.
-- Langston Hughes

#Love Is #People #Heaven

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.
-- Langston Hughes

#Details #Walt #Findings

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.
-- Langston Hughes

#Night #Black #Depth

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
-- Langston Hughes

#Sweet #Humble #Mind

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!
-- Langston Hughes

#Lying #Rivers #America

I loved my friend He went away from me There's nothing more to say The poem ends, Soft as it began- I loved my friend.
-- Langston Hughes

#Ends

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
-- Langston Hughes

#Wedding #People #Soul

...the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it,....
-- Langston Hughes

#Done #Way

Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.
-- Langston Hughes

#Equality #Air #America

Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on
-- Langston Hughes

#Inspirational #Morning #Together

Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.
-- Langston Hughes

#Sea #Let Down #Life Is

Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.
-- Langston Hughes

#Cake

The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
-- Langston Hughes

#Kissing #Rivers #Faces

I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.
-- Langston Hughes

#Morning #Spring #Faces

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
-- Langston Hughes

#Inspirational Life #Lying #Half

Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
-- Langston Hughes

#Black #Proud #Banner

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
-- Langston Hughes

#Rain #Kissing #Water

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #America #Used

I will not take "but" for an answer.
-- Langston Hughes

#Attitude #Answers

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
-- Langston Hughes

#Music #People #Pulse

I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.
-- Langston Hughes

#Literature #Satisfied #Weary

Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Do you know that there are libraries in our country that will not stock a book by a Negro writer, not even as a gift? There are towns where Negro newspapers and magazines cannot be sold except surreptitiously. There are American magazines that have never published anything by Negroes. There are film studios that have never hired a Negro writer. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
-- Langston Hughes

#Country #Book #Color

Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.
-- Langston Hughes

#Love Is #Tree #Shadow

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
-- Langston Hughes

#Strong #Mountain #Temples

Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
-- Langston Hughes

#Resurrection #Poet #Graveyard

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.
-- Langston Hughes

#Home #Writing #Tonight

I dream a world... where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #Joy #Needs

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.
-- Langston Hughes

#Race #Minorities #Helping

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.
-- Langston Hughes

#Book #Writing #Men

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall.
-- Langston Hughes

#Fall #Two #Peg

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.
-- Langston Hughes

#Long #Black History #Democracy

Melting pot Harlem-Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown.
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #New York #Tunnels

Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
-- Langston Hughes

#Hands

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams...
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #African American #Hold Fast

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
-- Langston Hughes

#Rain #Lullaby

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.
-- Langston Hughes

#Rights #Government #Buffalo

When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.
-- Langston Hughes

#Sports #Baseball #Men

Humor is when the joke's on you but hits the other fellow first -- before it boomerangs.
-- Langston Hughes

#Firsts #Boomerang #Jokes

Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.
-- Langston Hughes

#Summer #Winter #Giving

Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.
-- Langston Hughes

#Daddy #Singing #Trying

Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #Cat #Daddy

These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.
-- Langston Hughes

#White #Feet #Miles

Road's in front o' me, Nothin' to do but walk.
-- Langston Hughes

#Walks #Walking

Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.
-- Langston Hughes

#Christian #Doubt #Atheism

I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.
-- Langston Hughes

#Women #Wife #Wish

There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #Certain

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.
-- Langston Hughes

#White #Black #Prejudice

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.
-- Langston Hughes

#Moon #Color #Talking

Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.
-- Langston Hughes

#Song #Snow #Darkness

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?
-- Langston Hughes

#Beautiful #Tired #Waiting

It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job.
-- Langston Hughes

#Jobs #Cutting #Unemployment

For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
-- Langston Hughes

#Writing #Worst #Best Poem

That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are wise: Her bandage hides two festering sores That once perhaps were eyes.
-- Langston Hughes

#Wise #Eye #Two

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm
-- Langston Hughes

#Jazz #Life Is #Rhythm

They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.
-- Langston Hughes

#House #Police #Intolerance

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.
-- Langston Hughes

#Jesus #Texas #Self

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.
-- Langston Hughes

#Home #Radio #Misery

As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.
-- Langston Hughes

#New York #Long #Georgia

Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!
-- Langston Hughes

#Fall #Together #Atoms

When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.
-- Langston Hughes

#Running #Turns

Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.
-- Langston Hughes

#Love #Eye #Apples

Gather up In the arms of your love—Those who expect No love from above.
-- Langston Hughes

#Arms

I’s been livin’ a long time in yesterday, Sandy chile, an’ I knows there ain’t no room in de world fo’ nothin’ mo’n love. I know, chile! Ever’thing there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on yo’ soul. An’ to love sho ‘nough, you got to have a spot in yo’ heart fo’ ever’body – great an’ small, white an’ black, an’ them what’s good an’ them what’s evil – ‘cause love ain’t got no crowded-out places where de good ones stay an’ de bad ones can’t come in. When it gets that way, then it ain’t love.
-- Langston Hughes

#Heart #White #Yesterday

So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love-- But for livin' I was born.
-- Langston Hughes

#Born #Stills

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself
-- Langston Hughes

#Men #World #Firsts

Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?
-- Langston Hughes

#Song #Pain #Laughter

Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry-- I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.
-- Langston Hughes

#Baby #Sweet #May

There is no color line in death.
-- Langston Hughes

#Color #Lines

Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Listen closely: You'll hear their feet Beating out and beating out a - You think It's a happy beat? Listen to it closely: Ain't you heard something underneath like a - What did I say? Sure, I'm happy! Take it away! Dream Boogie Hey, pop! Re-bop! Mop! Y-e-a-h!
-- Langston Hughes

#Dream #Morning #Thinking