Langston Hughes Quotes

“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.”

— Langston Hughes

“Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.”

— Langston Hughes

“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

“My father hated Negroes.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

Violent anger makes me physically ill.

— Langston Hughes

“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.”

— Langston Hughes

I wish the rent Was heaven sent.

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

“Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain
All, all the stretch of these great green states
And make America again!”

— Langston Hughes

“I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
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

“You and I
By Henry Alford
My hand is lonely for your clasping, dear;
My ear is tired waiting for your call.
I want your strength to help, your laugh to cheer;
Heart, soul and senses need you, one and all.
I droop without your full, frank sympathy;
We ought to be together-you and I;
We want each other so, to comprehend
The dream, the hope, things planned, or seen, or wrought.
Companion, comforter and guide and friend,
As much as love asks love, does thought ask thought.
Life is so short, so fast the lone hours fly,
We ought to be together, you and I.”

— Langston Hughes

Justice
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

“Your explanation depresses me," I said.
"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.”

— Langston Hughes

“Words Like Freedom
There are words like Freedom
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heartstrings freedom sings
All day everyday.
There are words like Liberty
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I know
You would know why.”

— Langston Hughes

“Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.”

— Langston Hughes

“You see, books had been happening to me.”

— Langston Hughes

God in his infinite wisdom
Did not make me very wise-
So when my actions are stupid
They hardly take God by surprise.

— Langston Hughes

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

— Langston Hughes

“Because shoes got by devilish ways will burn your feet.”

— Langston Hughes

“Quiet Girl
I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.”

— Langston Hughes

“As much as they loved Negroes, Neroes didn't seem to love Michael and Anne.”

— Langston Hughes

“Joe has sense enough to know
He is a god.
So many gods don't know.”

— 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

“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

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

— 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

“Money and art are far apart.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

“Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.”

— Langston Hughes

“Frosting Freedom Is just frosting On somebody else's Cake
And so must be Till we Learn how to Bake.”

— Langston Hughes

“Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— 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

“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

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

— Langston Hughes

“When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.”

— Langston Hughes

“I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing ... not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.”

— Langston Hughes

“These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white folks and another ten thousand keeping up with colored.”

— Langston Hughes

“A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.”

— Langston Hughes

Harriet Tubman lived to see the harvest.

— Langston Hughes

“Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything.”

— Langston Hughes

This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America - this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

— 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

“I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied.”

— Langston Hughes

“The first of the month falls every month, too, North or South. And them white folks who sends bills never forgets to send them-the phone bill, the furniture bill, the water bill, the gas bill, insurance, house rent.”

— 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

“Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes