Top 186 Quotes & Sayings by Langston Hughes

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American novelist Langston Hughes.

Last updated on December 3, 2024.

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue."

American - Novelist | February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Langston Hughes

Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.

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 are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.

Langston Hughes

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

Langston Hughes

Writing is like travelling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying.

Langston Hughes

My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.

Langston Hughes

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.

Langston Hughes

Without going outside his race, and even among the better classes with their 'white' culture and conscious American manners, but still Negro enough to be different, there is sufficient matter to furnish a black artist with a lifetime of creative work.

Langston Hughes

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.

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

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

Langston Hughes

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes

I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.

Langston Hughes

One of the great needs of Negro children is to have books about themselves and their lives that can help them be proud.

Langston Hughes

I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.

Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

Langston Hughes

I must never write when I do not want to write.

Langston Hughes

Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.

Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.

Langston Hughes

It's such a Bore Being always Poor.

Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

Langston Hughes

My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.

Langston Hughes

My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast.

Langston Hughes

I will not take 'but' for an answer.

Langston Hughes

To my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, 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

Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.

Langston Hughes

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

Langston Hughes

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

Langston Hughes

Violent anger makes me physically ill.

Langston Hughes

The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.

Langston Hughes

In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.

Langston Hughes

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

Langston Hughes

Because my mouth Is wide with laughter And my throat Is deep with song, You do not think I suffer after I have held my pain So long? Because my mouth Is wide with laughter You do not hear My inner cry? Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not know I die?

Langston Hughes

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.

Langston Hughes

Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.

Langston Hughes

A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.

Langston Hughes

Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.

Langston Hughes

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.

Langston Hughes

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!

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

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America. 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. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes

Reach Up Your Hand... and take a star.

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

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

A dream deferred is a dream denied.

Langston Hughes

I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.

Langston Hughes

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.

Langston Hughes

I look at my own body With eyes no longer blind- And I see that my own hands can make The world that's in my mind.

Langston Hughes

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.

Langston Hughes

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself

Langston Hughes

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.

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

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

Langston Hughes

Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.

Langston Hughes

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?

Langston Hughes

Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on

Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.

Langston Hughes