Quotes from Langston Hughes

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!True anyhow no matter how manyLiars use those words.

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!

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

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.

Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!

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.

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!'

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

A dog gets lonesome just like a human. He wants to associate with other dogs, but when they take him out, the poor dog is on a leash and cannot run around.

Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro - and beautiful!

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

Sometimes a crumb fallsFrom the tables of joy, Sometimes a boneIs flung.To some peopleLove is given, To othersOnly heaven.

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

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

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

Negro blood is sure powerful—because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop—you are a Negro!… Black is powerful.

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

Good morning, daddy!Ain't you heardThe boogie-woogie rumbleOf a dream deferred?

Looks like what drives me crazy Don't have no effect on you-- But I'm gonna keep on at it Till it drives you crazy, too.

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!"

Murmuring gentlyOver fraises du bois,"I'm so ashamed of being white."

Ordinary Negroes hadn't heard of the Negro Renaissance. And if they had, it hadn't raised their wages any.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,I heard a Negro play.Down on Lenox Avenue the other nightBy the pale dull pallor of an old gas lightHe did a lazy sway…He did a lazy sway…To the tune o' those Weary Blues.