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

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
Brotherhood
Equality
Diversity
Breathe
Air
America

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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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
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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!
Langston Hughes
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Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.
Langston Hughes
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There is no color line in art.
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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My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
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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
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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
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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.-
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 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
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Reach Up Your Hand... and take a star.
Langston Hughes
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The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
Langston Hughes
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Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on
Langston Hughes
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Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
Langston Hughes
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Life for me ain't been no crystal stair
Langston Hughes
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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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Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
Langston Hughes
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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