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

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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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.
Langston Hughes
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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.
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Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.
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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.
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I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
Langston Hughes
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Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
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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 do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust!
Langston Hughes
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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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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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To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.
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.
Langston Hughes
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My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
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Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.
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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Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
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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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.
Langston Hughes
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Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.
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