Quote

I stay cool, and dig all jive, That's the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.

Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes
Age: 66 †
Born: 1901
Born: February 1
Died: 1967
Died: May 22
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Joplin
Missouri
James Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes
Cool
Return
Stay
Alive
Learn
Live
Way
Jive
Motto

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Langston Hughes
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The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
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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
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Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
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I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that's in my mind.
Langston Hughes
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Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake-- And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.
Langston Hughes
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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
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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
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I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.
Langston Hughes
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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
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Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.
Langston Hughes
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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
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7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.
Langston Hughes
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Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
Langston Hughes
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What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
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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
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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
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I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.
Langston Hughes
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I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
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I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.
Langston Hughes