Good morning, Revolution: You’re the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on.
I’m so tired of waiting, aren’t you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?
I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.
That Justice is a blind goddess Is a thing to which we black are wise: Her bandage hides two festering sores That once perhaps were eyes.
I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
When people care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
Gather up In the arms of your love – Those who expect No love from above.
Money and art are far apart.
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale.
Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows, Help us to see That without the dust the rainbow Would not be.
America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath – America will be!
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.
Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.
For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn’t write anything.
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
Hang yourself, poet, in your own words. Otherwise, you are dead.
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.