Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
Langston Hughes
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Great
Cold
Going
Happen
Like
Half
Jobs
Felt
Poems
Didn
Washington
Happens
Hungry
Many
Wrote
More quotes by Langston Hughes
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
Langston Hughes
Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
Langston Hughes
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
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.
Langston Hughes
Everything there is but lovin' leaves a rust on your old soul
Langston Hughes
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
Langston Hughes
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
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
Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.
Langston Hughes
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
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
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.
Langston Hughes
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
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.
Langston Hughes
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
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
Words Like Freedom There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings freedom sings All day everyday. There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I know You would know why.
Langston Hughes
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
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
Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.
Langston Hughes