Top 150 Langston Hughes Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 4

51. “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

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

— Langston Hughes

53. “I’ve been scared and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between ‘em they done Tried to make me Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’ – But I don’t care! I’m still here!”

— Langston Hughes

54. “Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.”

— Langston Hughes

55. “Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.”

— Langston Hughes

56. “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

— Langston Hughes

57. “Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

— Langston Hughes

58. “It’s such a Bore Being always Poor.”

— Langston Hughes

59. “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

60. “I learnt that the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it, even if in the beginning you think you can’t do it at all.”

— Langston Hughes

61. “I will not take ‘but’ for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy’s ‘but’ too long.”

— Langston Hughes

62. “Out of love, No regrets – Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets – Though the return Be never.”

— Langston Hughes

63. “Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

66. “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

67. “The depression brought everybody down a peg or two. And the Negro had but few pegs to fall.”

— Langston Hughes

68. “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

69. “I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.”

— Langston Hughes

70. “I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.”

— Langston Hughes

71. “We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.”

— Langston Hughes

72. “I wish the rent Was heaven sent.”

— Langston Hughes

73. “Humor is when the joke’s on you but hits the other fellow first – before it boomerangs.”

— Langston Hughes

74. “I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn’t, But you thought you would.”

— Langston Hughes

75. “Democracy will not come Today, this year Nor ever Through compromise and fear.”

— Langston Hughes

76. “To some people Love is given, To others Only Heaven.”

— Langston Hughes

77. “I will not take “but” for an answer.”

— Langston Hughes

78. “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

79. “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

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

— Langston Hughes

81. “Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

83. “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

84. “The prerequisite for writing is having something to say.”

— Langston Hughes

85. “Life dosent frighten me at all.”

— Langston Hughes

86. “Whiskey just naturally likes me but beer likes me better.”

— Langston Hughes

87. “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

88. “Hold onto your dreams.”

— Langston Hughes

89. “Melting pot Harlem-Harlem of honey and chocolate and caramel and rum and vinegar and lemon and lime and gall. Dusky dream Harlem rumbling into a nightmare tunnel where the subway from the Bronx keeps right on downtown.”

— Langston Hughes

90. “Misery is when you heard on the radio that the neighborhood you live in is a slum but you always thought it was home.”

— Langston Hughes

91. “Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro – and beautiful!”

— Langston Hughes

92. “Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.”

— Langston Hughes

93. “I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head – So I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.”

— Langston Hughes

94. “Good evening, daddy! Ain’t you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes

96. “Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow.”

— Langston Hughes

97. “There’s a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.”

— Langston Hughes

98. “Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country had better be disguised as poetry. Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.”

— Langston Hughes

99. “Gather up In the arms of your love – Those who expect No love from above.”

— Langston Hughes

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

— Langston Hughes