Langston Hughes quotes

Langston Hughes was an influential American poet, playwright, and social activist associated with the Harlem Renaissance. His work explored the lives, dreams, and struggles of African Americans through powerful and accessible language. He remains celebrated for giving voice to Black experiences and shaping American literature. Here are 97 of his quotes:

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.

Langston Hughes

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

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 swear to the Lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me.

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

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

Langston Hughes

I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.

Langston Hughes

Life is a egg you have to be patient and carefull with it or it will brake.

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

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

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

Langston Hughes

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

Langston Hughes

While over Alabama earth These words are gently spoken: Serve - and hate will die unborn. Love - and chains are broken.

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.

Langston Hughes

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

Love is a naked shadow On a gnarled and naked tree.

Langston Hughes

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

Langston Hughes

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be!

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

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

There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.

Langston Hughes