Langston Hughes Quotes

153 Sourced Quotes

The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.

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
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
Sometimes I wish the public were equally aware of the men of our race in the cultural fields. You, for instance, have you ever bought a book by a Negro writer?

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
When I were a young man, I used to play baseball and steal bases just like Jackie Robinson. If the empire would rule me out, I would get mad and hit the empire.

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
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.

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

Langston Hughes
I know how to handle women who act like ladies, but my landlady ain't no lady. Sometimes I even wish I was living with my wife again so I could have my own place and not have no landladies.

Langston Hughes
"Besides," Milberry said to himself, "the ways of white folks, I mean some white folks, is too much for me. I reckon they must be a few good ones, but most of 'em ain't good—leastwise they don't treat me good. And Lawd know, I ain't never done nothin' to 'em, nothin' a-tall.

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
I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She'll make you so jealous, you'll bust!

Langston Hughes
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
In a Harlem cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

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

Langston Hughes
It were depression, too. They cut my wages down once at the foundry. They cut my wages down again. Then they cut my wages out, also the job.

Langston Hughes
Wear it
Like a banner
Lor the proud—
Not like a shroud.

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
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
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
Hard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

Langston Hughes
As long as what is is-and Georgia is Georgia-I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.

Langston Hughes
The white race drug me over here from Africa, slaved me, freed me, lynched me, starved me during the depression, Jim Crowed me during the war—then they come talking about they is scared of me! Which is why I am glad I have got one spot to call my own where I hold sway—Harlem

Langston Hughes
Practical man,
He said, Train your head,
Your heart, and your hand.
Your fate is here
Not afar,
So let down your bucket
Where you are.

Langston Hughes