I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
Langston HughesRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the significance of racial identity and the power associated with being Black.
Langston Hughes highlights the profound impact of Black identity in society, suggesting that heritage is inescapable and powerful. The assertion that 'one drop' of Black blood defines a person as a Negro underscores the societal perception of race, illustrating how racial identity can shape an individual's experience and social standing.
Themes
IdentityRacePowerHeritageBlackness
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on racial identity, one might reference this quote to highlight the enduring impact of ancestry.
More from Langston Hughes
All quotes βMy writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.
Langston HughesRead
I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.
Langston HughesRead
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 HughesRead
The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss
Langston HughesRead
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.
Langston HughesRead
Similar quotes
Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.
Hermann HesseRead
After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.
Loren EiseleyRead
We need a right view of the cross. It is both a historical event that can take us to Heaven and a current event that can bring Heaven to bear on Earth.
Tony EvansRead
They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable. Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species - we, in short - had the potential to construct an enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort. It is enough not to see, not to listen, not to act.
Primo LeviRead
Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, but the incarnation of God Himself
R. C. SproulRead