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 HUGHESI stay cool, and dig all jive, That’s the way I stay alive. My motto, as I live and learn, is Dig and be dug In return.
More Langston Hughes Quotes
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Everybody should take each other as they are, white, black, Indians, Creole. Then there would be no prejudice, nations would get along.
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I’m so tired of waiting, aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?
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I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
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O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
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Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.
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Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
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Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.
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It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.
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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.
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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.
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Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
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I dream a world… where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, my world!
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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.
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Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I’m still pulling.
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Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
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For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.
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Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.
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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.
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Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.
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There is no color line in art.
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A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.
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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.
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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.
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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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Road’s in front o’ me, Nothin’ to do but walk.
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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.
LANGSTON HUGHES