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I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

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
Take
Long
Negroes
Answer
Answers
Democracy
Looking
Black

More quotes by Langston Hughes

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Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.
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Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.
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Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.
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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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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!
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We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren?t it doesn?t matter.
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Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.
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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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There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.
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I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.
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This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.
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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.
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My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.
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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.
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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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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.
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Money and art are far apart.
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When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself
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The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
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