Langston Hughes Quotes That We All Need In 2025

UPDATED: 5:30 p.m. ET, Jan. 31, 2025

Saturday marks what would have been the 124th birthday of Langston Hughes, who isn’t solely proof that the energy of the written phrase has endured all through historical past, but additionally, arguably, that the literary contributions through the world-famous Harlem Renaissance modified the publishing recreation endlessly.

Hughes was one of many undisputed leaders of that group of famend Black icons, together with acclaimed musicians, dancers, artists, vogue designers and stylists, writers, politicians and students. Due to this fact, it’s becoming that Hughes’ birthday would coincide with the beginning of Black Historical past Month, endlessly an unavoidable collision of Black excellence to kick off 28 full days of cultural commemoration.

And what higher strategy to mark the beginning of Black Historical past Month than by celebrating Hughes’ phrases in print in addition to these he spoke throughout his life, which started on Feb. 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. Regardless of the shape during which his phrases have been eternally preserved, Hughes’ quotes are one thing all of us want, particularly in 2025.

Hughes’ highway to Harlem — the place he would change into a pioneering author and poet alongside the likes of Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Wright and lots of others — is known.

Portrait of Langston Hughes. | Supply: Lincoln College / Getty

Hughes was first printed in 1921 “The Disaster,” which was the official journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which went on to change into extra generally known as the NAACP. He would go on to launch a set of poems all all through the Nineteen Twenties that included “The Weary Blues, “Tremendous Garments to the Jew,” “The Negro Mom and Different Dramatic Recitation,” “Pricey Beautiful Dying” and “The Dream Keeper and Different Poems.”

He additionally wrote novels and quick tales like “Not With out Laughter,” “Laughing to Maintain from Crying,” “Easy Speaks His Thoughts” and, one among his most well-known, “The Methods of White People.”

Hughes’ work was deeply political and unapologetically Black, as proven by the next temporary passage that was printed in The Nation in 1926.

“The youthful Negro artists who create now intend to precise our particular person dark-skinned selves with out worry or disgrace. If white persons are happy we’re glad,” Hughes wrote on the time. “If they don’t seem to be, it doesn’t matter. We all know we’re lovely. And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If coloured persons are happy we’re glad. If they don’t seem to be, their displeasure doesn’t matter both. We construct our temples for tomorrow, sturdy as we all know how, and we stand on high of the mountain free inside ourselves.”

Many African American visionaries, together with Hughes, uprooted themselves from the United States and moved to Paris as a result of heated racial local weather in America. They felt like their work was extra appreciated in Europe than at dwelling and believed that Paris afforded them extra alternatives to additional their careers.

Hughes’ former dwelling in Harlem was in the end designated to be a nationwide landmark; one of 22 American sites with Black cultural significance that the African American Cultural Heritage Motion Fund has actively labored to guard and protect.

Hughes died Could 22, 1967, following issues after belly surgical procedure associated to prostate most cancers. He was 65 years previous.

Hughes’ legacy nonetheless lives on. His work has been featured in movies, performs and music and stays a staple in American tradition, particularly within the Black group.

See a few of his most iconic phrases under, that are nonetheless very a lot related in 2025.