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Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.

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
Ever
Come
Years
Compromise
Democracy
Year
Fear
Today

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Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.
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When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself
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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?
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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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Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
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For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
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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.
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Life for me ain't been no crystal stair
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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There is no color line in art.
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Your explanation depresses me, I said. Your nonsense depresses me, said Simple.
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