Langston Hughes - People Quotes

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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
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose —
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

Langston Hughes
The night is beautiful,
So are the faces of my people.

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
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
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
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
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.

Langston Hughes
It is the duty of the younger Negro artist... 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
When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

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
It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.

Langston Hughes
Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas

Langston Hughes
Anyday, one can walk down the street in a big city and see a thousand people. Any photographer can photograph these people - but very few photographers can make their prints not only reproductions of the people taken, but a comment upon them - or more, a comment upon their lives - or more still, a comment upon the social order that creates these lives.

Langston Hughes