Words matter. These are the best Langston Hughes Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I will not take ‘but’ for an answer.
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
Violent anger makes me physically ill.
Very early in life, it seemed to me that there was a relationship between the problems of the Negro people in America and the Jewish people in Russia, and that the Jewish people’s problems were worse than ours.
I must never write when I do not want to write.
The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.
Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.
I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows – except us – that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet.
Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
Writing is like travelling. It’s wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.
Even the ‘Negro’ shows like ‘Amos and Andy’ and ‘Beulah’ are written largely by white writers – the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.
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 are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.
I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.
Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
