Langston Hughes Quotes

The past has been a mint Of blood and sorrow. That must not be True of tomorrow.

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.

Humor is when the joke's on you but hits the other fellow first -- before it boomerangs.

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

Money and art are far apart.

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

Out of love, No regrets-- Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets-- Though the return Be never.

I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong.

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.

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.

Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.

Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.

While over Alabama earth These words are gently spoken: Serve and hate will die unborn. Love and chains are broken.

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

The rhythm of life is a jazz rhythm

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.

Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.

The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negroes had but few pegs to fall.

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.

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

There is no color line in art.

Life dosent frighten me at all.

Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly Black like me

7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.

We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.

How still, How strangely still The water is today, It is not good For water To be so still that way. ~ "Sea Calm

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.

I will not take "but" for an answer.

Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.

Peace We passed their graves: The dead men there, Winners or losers, Did not care. In the dark They could not see Who had gained The victory.

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.

Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.

My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.

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.

I don't dare start thinking in the morning. I don't dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head-- So I don't dare start thinking in the morning.

The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss

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.

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.

It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.

Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.

Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry-- I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.

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.

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.