Quote

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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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
Black
Aspirations
Artist
Negro
Art
Aspiration
Beautiful
Hidden
Change
Younger
People
Duty
White
Force
Whispering

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
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Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.
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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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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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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
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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.
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Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.
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Out of love, No regrets-- Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets-- Though the return Be never.
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
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Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.
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Believing everything she read In the daily news, (No in-between to choose) She thought that only One side won, Not that BOTH Might lose.
Langston Hughes
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The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
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?
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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.
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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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
Langston Hughes
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I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?
Langston Hughes
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This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.
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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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