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
Learn
Live
Way
Jive
Motto
Cool
Return
Stay
Alive

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.
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I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
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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.
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Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
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The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.
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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.
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It is the duty of the younger Negro artist . . . to change through the force of his art that old whispering I want to be white, hidden in the aspirations of his people, to Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!
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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.
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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.
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Money and art are far apart.
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Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-
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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?
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When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.
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Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
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I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.
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Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
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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.
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Life for me ain't been no crystal stair
Langston Hughes
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Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
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If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who's coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.
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