"Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it."

Langston Hughes Literature See all quotes by Langston Hughes →

React to this quote

More by Langston Hughes

“A Centennial Tribute to L. Hughes at Howard University”

“A selection of Langston Hughes's more political poetry”

“Langston Hughes on Poets.org”

“1988 audio interview of Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes. Interview by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio”

“Montage of a Dream Deferred”

“You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word “Negro” is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown. My father was a darker brown. My mother an olive-yellow.”

Resonant Thoughts

"“In German Indology of the NS era, a largely nonscholarly mystical nativism deriving ultimately from a mixture of romanticism and protonationalism merged with that objectivism of Wissenschaft earlier …"

— Sheldon Pollock

Literature1948

#humor

"elf-organization the appearance of structure or pattern without an external agent imposing it."

— Francis Heylighen

Education1960

#humor

"Why do we weep in grief,' the aunt wondered. 'Dogs, deer, birds sufferent with dry eyes and in silence. The dumb suffering of animals. Probably a survival technique."

— Annie Proulx

Literature1935

#humor

"Now let me ask you this: why do you think there's a brick wall behind comedians? Maybe, in the old days, there was a wolf that did comedy, and he wasn't that funny. All the old clubs had STRAW in the …"

— Mitch Hedberg

Entertainment1968–2005

#humor