Quotessence
Home / Authors / Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllPoetryAfrican AmericansBlacksRacePoemRacismRace RelationsDreamPeopleAmericaIfsBlackKnowsHarlem RenaissancePovertyWorldStillsWhiteDemocracyFall

Famous Langston Hughes Quotes

“Gentle ladies in the days of antiquity never had to face the problems Minnie has to face. In fact, the whole conventional concept of the word 'lady' is tied up with wealth, high standing, and a sheltered life for women. Minnie has to face the world every day, in fact do battle with it." "True," said Simple, "to remain a lady, Minnie often has to fight. It is not always easy for a colored lady to keep her ladyhood." "You are bringing up race again," I said. "But this time I think you put your finger on the crux of the argument.”

WomenRaceStrengthAfrican AmericansBlacks
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image

“I come from a land whose democracy from the very beginning has been tainted with race prejudice born of slavery, and whose richness has been poured through the narrow channels of greed into the hands of the few. I come to the Second International Writers Congress representing my country, America, but most especially the Negro peoples of America, and the poor peoples of America—because I am both a Negro and poor. And that combination of color and of poverty gives me the right then to speak for the most oppressed group in America, that group that has known so little of American democracy, the fifteen million Negroes who dwell within our borders. We are the people who have long known in actual practice the meaning of the word Fascism—for the American attitude towards us has always been one of economic and social discrimination: in many states of our country Negroes are not permitted to vote or to hold political office. In some sections freedom of movement is greatly hindered, especially if we happen to be sharecroppers on the cotton farms of the South. All over America we know what it is to be refused admittance to schools and colleges, to theatres and concert halls, to hotels and restaurants. We know Jim Crow cars, race riots, lynchings, we know the sorrows of the nine Scottsboro boys, innocent young Negroes imprisoned some six years now for a crime that even the trial judge declared them not guilty of having committed, and for which some of them have not yet come to trial. Yes, we Negroes in America do not have to be told what Fascism is in action. We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.”

AmericaRacePovertyRacismDiscriminationFascismAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace Relations
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“Poets who write mostly about love, roses and moonlight, sunsets and snow, must lead a very quiet life. Seldom, I imagine, does their poetry get them into difficulties. Beauty and lyricism are really related to another world, to ivory towers, to your head in the clouds, feet floating off the earth. Unfortunately, having been born poor--and also colored--in Missouri, I was stuck in the mud from the beginning. Try as I might to float off into the clouds, poverty and Jim Crow would grab me by the heels, and right back on earth I would land.”

PoetryBeautyPovertyPoemsPoetsAfrican AmericansBlacksJim CrowLyricism
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“So goes the life of social poet. I am sure none of these things would ever have happened to me had I limited the subject matter of my poems to roses and moonlight. But, unfortunately, I was born poor--and colored--and almost all the prettiest roses I have seen have been in rich white people's yards--not in mine. That is why I cannot write exclusively about roses and moonlight--for sometimes in the moonlight my brothers see a fiery cross and a circle of Klansmen's hoods. Sometimes in the moonlight a dark body sways from a lynching tree--but for his funeral there are no roses.”

PoetryPovertyRacismPoemsPoetsAfrican AmericansBlacks
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“Oh, Lawd, I done forgot Harlem! Say, you colored folks, hungry a long time in 135th Street--they got swell music at the Waldorf-Astoria. It sure is a mighty nice place to shake hips in, too. There's dancing after supper in a big warm room. It's cold as hell on Lenox Avenue. All you've had all day is a cup of coffee. Your pawnshop overcoat's a ragged banner on your hungry frame. You know, downtown folks are just crazy about Paul Robeson! Maybe they'll like you, too, black mob from Harlem. Drop in at the Waldorf this afternoon for tea. Stay to dinner. Give Park Avenue a lot of darkie color--free for nothing!”

RacePovertyRacismHungerAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsHarlemHotelsWaldorf Astoria
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“We Negroes of America are tired of a world divided superficially on the basis of blood and color, but in reality on the basis of poverty and power—the rich over the poor, no matter what their color. We Negroes of America are tired of a world in which it is possible for any group of people to say to another: "You have no right to happiness, or freedom, or the joy of life." We are tired of a world where forever we work for someone else and the profits are not ours. We are tired of a world where, when we raise our voices against oppression, we are immediately jailed, intimidated, beaten, sometimes lynched. Nicolás GuiIlén has been in prison in Cuba, Jacques Roumain, in Haiti, Angelo Herndon in the United States. Today a letter comes from the great Indian writer, Raj Anand, saying that he cannot be with us here in Paris because the British police in England have taken his passport from him. I say, we darker peoples of the earth are tired of a world in which things like that can happen.”

RacePovertyPowerRacismDiscriminationOppressionAfrican AmericansBlacksRace Relations
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“They could not understand that there is some few people in the world who do good without being asked. It were a hot day, I were a little boy, and ice-cream cones are always good. And that man just looked at me and thought I would like one--which I did. That is one reason why I do not hate all white folks today because some white folks will do good without being asked or hauled up before the Supreme Court to have a law promulgated against them.”

RaceGoodnessAfrican AmericansGood DeedsIce CreamBlacksRace RelationsWhites
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image

“Writing is the urge to tell folks about it. About what? About what hurts you inside. Colored folks, through the sheer fact of being colored, have got plenty hurting them inside. You see, we, too, are one of those minority races the newspapers are always talking about. Except that we are here in America, not in Europe, fourteen million of us--a rather large minority, but still a minority. Now, what's hurting us? Well, Jim Crow is hurting us. Ghettos, and segregation, and lack of jobs is hurting us. Signs up: COLORED TRADE NOT DESIRED, and dirty names such as the Jews know under Hitler hurt us. So those of us who are writers have plenty to tell the world about. To us democracy is a paradox, full of contradictions.”

WritingWorkDemocracyRacismTraumaMinoritiesAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregation
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“What I mean is, you should not have to have a business in a Jewish neighborhood to be interested in Jewish problems, or own a spaghetti stand to be interested in Italians, or a bar to care about the Irish. In a democracy, everybody's problems are related, and it's up to all of us to help solve them." "If I did not have a business reason to be interested in their business," said Simple, "then what business would I have being interested in their business?" "Just a human reason," I said. "It's all human business." "Maybe that is why they don't join the N.A.A.C.P.," said Simple. "Because they do not think a Negro is human.”

BusinessDemocracyEmpathyRacismUnityProblemsAfrican AmericansBlacksNaacp
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image

“That evening there were police outside the building in which I spoke, and in the air the rising tension of race that is peculiar to the South. It had been rumored that some of the local citizenry were saying that I should be run out of town, and that one of the sheriffs agreed, saying, "Sure, he ought to be run out! It's bad enough to call Christ a bastard. But when he calls him a nigger, he's gone too far!"... ...Nevertheless, I remember with pleasure the courtesy and kindness of many of the students and faculty at Chapel Hill and their lack of agreement with the anti-Negro elements of the town. There I began to learn at the University of North Carolina how hard it is to be a white liberal in the South.”

PoetryRacismSouthPoetsAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsWhitesLiberals
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“There is in Moscow a great curiosity for things American, and a great sympathy for things Negro. So, being both an American and a Negro, I am met everywhere with friendly questions from children and adults as to how we live at home. Is there really a crisis, with people hungry and ragged when there are in America so many factories, so much technique, so much wheat, and cotton and livestock? How can that be? Do they actually kill people in electric chairs? Actually lynch Negroes? Why? The children in the Moscow streets, wise little city children, will oft times gather around you if you are waiting for a streetcar, or looking into a shop window. They will take your hand and ask you about the Scottsboro boys, or if you like the Soviet Union and are going to stay forever. Sometimes as you pass a group of children playing, they will stop and exclaim, "Negro!" But in wonder and surprise a long ways from the insulting derision of the word "Nigger" in the mouths of America's white children. Here, the youth in the schools are taught to respect all races.”

ChildrenRacismPrejudiceSoviet UnionAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsMoscowUssr
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“Don't you believe in nonviolence?' I asked. "'Yes,' said Miss Minnie, 'when the other parties are nonviolent, too. But when I have just come out of a funeral parlor from looking at a little small black boy shot three times by a full-grown cop, I think it is about time I raised my pocketbook and strike at least one blow for freedom.”

ChildrenViolenceRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice BrutalityRace Relations
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image

“They will let you have dope Because they are quite willing To drug you or kill you. They will let you have babies Because they are quite willing To pauperize you-- Or use your kids as labor boys For army, air force, or uranium mine. They will let you have alcohol To make you sodden and drunk And foolish. They will gleefully let you Kill your damn self any way you choose With liquor, drugs, or whatever.”

DeathPoetryPoemAlcoholDrugsAfrican AmericansBlacksBabies
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“Nine Negro boys in Alabama were on trial for their lives when I got back from Cuba and Haiti. The famous Scottsboro "rape" case was in full session. I visited those boys in the death house at Kilby Prison, and I wrote many poems about them. One of those poems was: CHRIST IN ALABAMA Christ is a Nigger, Beaten and black-- O, bare your back. Mary is His Mother-- Mammy of the South, Silence your mouth. God's His Father-- White Master above, Grant us your love. Most holy bastard Of the bleeding mouth: Nigger Christ On the cross of the South.”

PoetryPoemSouthTrialsAfrican AmericansBlacksAlabamaWrongful ConvictionScottsboro Boys
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“Dream of Freedom There’s a dream in the land With its back against the wall. By muddled names and strange Sometimes the dream is called. There are those who claim This dream for theirs alone— A sin for which, we know They must atone. Unless shared in common Like sunlight and like air, The dream will die for lack Of substance anywhere. The dream knows no frontier or tongue, The dream no class or race. The dream cannot be kept secure In any one locked place. This dream today embattled, With its back against the wall— To save the dream for one, It must be saved for ALL.”

PoetryFreedomPoemAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationBrown V Board Of Education
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“On the train I had a lot of time to think. I thought how in the thirty years of my life I had seldom gotten on a train in America without being conscious of my color. In the South, there are Jim Crow cars and Negroes must ride separate from the whites, usually in a filthy antiquated coach next to the engine, getting all the smoke and bumps and dirt. In the South, we cannot buy sleeping car tickets. Such comforts are only for white folks. And in the North where segregated travel is not the law, colored people have, nevertheless, many difficulties. In auto buses they must take the seats in the rear, over the wheels. On the boats they must occupy the worst cabins. The ticket agents always say that all other accommodations are sold. On trains, if one sits down by a white person, the white person will sometimes get up, flinging back an insult at the Negro who has dared to take a seat beside him. Thus it is that in America, if you are yellow, brown, or black, you can never travel anywhere without being reminded of your color, and oft-times suffering great inconveniences. I sat in the comfortable sleeping car on my first day out of Moscow and remembered many things about trips I had taken in America. I remembered how, once as a youngster going alone to see my father who was working in Mexico, I went into the dining car of the train to eat. I sat down at a table with a white man. The man looked at me and said, "You're a nigger, ain't you?" and left the table. It was beneath his dignity to eat with a Negro child. At St. Louis I went onto the station platform to buy a glass of milk. The clerk behind the counter said, “We don't serve niggers," and refused to sell me anything. As I grew older I learned to expect this often when traveling. So when I went South to lecture on my poetry at Negro universities, I carried my own food because I knew I could not go into the dining cars. Once from Washington to New Orleans, I lived all the way on the train on cold food. I remembered this miserable trip as I sat eating a hot dinner on the diner of the Moscow-Tashkent express. Traveling South from New York, at Washington, the capital of our country, the official Jim Crow begins. There the conductor comes through the train and, if you are a Negro, touches you on the shoulder and says, "The last coach forward is the car for colored people." Then you must move your baggage and yourself up near the engine, because when the train crosses the Potomac River into Virginia, and the dome of the Capitol disappears, it is illegal any longer for white people and colored people to ride together. (Or to eat together, or sleep together, or in some places even to work together.) Now I am riding South from Moscow and am not Jim-Crowed, and none of the darker people on the train with me are Jim-Crowed, so I make a happy mental note in the back of my mind to write home to the Negro papers: "There is no Jim Crow on the trains of the Soviet Union.”

AmericaTravelRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace RelationsJim CrowUssrTrains
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“...Me, I do not want to go to no suburbans not even Brooklyn. But Joyce wants to integrate. She says America has got two cultures, which should not he divided as they now is, so let's leave Harlem." "Don't you agree that Joyce is right?" "White is right," said Simple, "so I have always heard. But I never did believe it. White folks do so much wrong! Not only do they mistreat me, but they mistreats themselves. Right now, all they got their minds on is shooting off rockets and sending up atom bombs and poisoning the air and fighting wars and Jim Crowing the universe." "Why do you say 'Jim Crowing the universe'?" "Because I have not heard tell of no Negro astronaughts nowhere in space yet. This is serious, because if one of them white Southerners gets to the moon first, COLORED NOT ADMITTED signs will go up all over heaven as sure as God made little green apples, and Dixiecrats will be asking the man in the moon, 'Do you want your daughter to marry a Nigra?' Meanwhile, the N.A.A.C.P. will have to go to the Supreme Court, as usual, to get an edict for Negroes to even set foot on the moon. By that time, Roy Wilkins will be too old to make the trip, and me, too." "But perhaps the Freedom Riders will go into orbit on their own," I said. "Or Harlem might vote Adam Powell into the Moon Congress.'' "One thing I know," said Simple, "is that Martin Luther King will pray himself up there. The moon must be a halfway stop on the way to Glory, and King will probably be arrested. I wonder if them Southerners will take police dogs to the moon?”

IntegrationAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace RelationsSuburbsJim Crow
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image

“We drove across the Red Square past Lenin's Mausoleum and the towers and domes of the Kremlin--and stopped a block away at the Grand Hotel. Our rooms were ready for us--clean and comfortable, with hot and cold water, homelike settees and deep roomy chairs. Courteous attendants were there, baths and elevator, a book shop and two restaurants. Everything that a hotel for white folks at home would have--except that, quite truthfully, there was no toilet paper. And no Jim Crow. Of course, we knew that one of the basic principles of the Soviet Union is the end of all racial distinctions. That's the main reason we had come to Moscow.”

RaceRacismCommunismSoviet UnionAfrican AmericansBlacksMoscowJim CrowUssrHotels
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“In the course of our conversation, I learned that there were many cities in Central Asia where dark men and women are in control of the government. And I thought about Mississippi where more than half of the population is Negro, but one never hears of a colored person in the government. In fact, in the state Negroes cannot even vote. And you will never meet them riding in the sleeping car.”

GovernmentRacismAsiaAfrican AmericansPoliticiansBlacksSegregationRace RelationsMississippiVoting Rights
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
Create image

“I feels evil myself when I sees a white cop talking smart to a colored woman, like I did the other day. A middle-aged brownskin lady had run through a red light on Lenox Avenue by accident, and this cop were glaring at her as if she had committed some kind of major crime. He was asking her what did she think the streets was for, to use for a speedway--as if twenty miles an hour were speeding. So I says to the cop, 'Would you talk that way to your mama?' "He ignored me. And as good luck would have it, he did not know I had put him in the dozens. Bu that time quite a crowd had gathered around. When he saw all them black faces, he lowered his voice, in fact shut up altogether, and just wrote that old lady a ticket, since he did not see any colored cops nearby to call to protect him.”

RaceRacismPoliceAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsTraffic Stops
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image

“You see this, don't you?" said Simple, showing me his N. A. A.C.P. card. "I have just joined the National Organization for the Association of Colored Folks and it is fine." "You mean the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People," I said. "Um-hum!" said Simple, "but they tell me it has white people in it, too." "That's right, it does." "I did not see none at the meeting where me and Joyce went this evening," said Simple. "No?" "No! There should have been some present because that fine colored speaker was getting white folks told—except that there was no white folks there to be told." "They just do not come to Negro neighborhoods to meetings," I said, "although they may belong. "Then we ought to hold some meetings downtown so that they can learn what this Negro problem is all about," said Simple. "It does not make sense to be always talking to ourselves....”

RaceRacismAfrican AmericansBlacksNaacp
Book:The Return of Simple
Create image