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 HUGHESWhy should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!
More Langston Hughes Quotes
-
-
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 -
Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I’m still pulling.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
I wish the rent Was heaven sent.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are wise: Her bandage hides two festering sores That once perhaps were eyes.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you – / Then, it will be true.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Life dosent frighten me at all.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.
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 -
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
I’m so tired of waiting, aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
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.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
But there are certain very practical things American Negro writers can do. And must do. There’s a song that says, “the time ain’t long.” That song is right. Something has got to change in America-and change soon. We must help that change to come.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
LANGSTON HUGHES -
Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.
LANGSTON HUGHES