
The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, V. 13, The Big Sea (2002), p. 36
The Big Sea (1940)
How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)
The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, V. 13, The Big Sea (2002), p. 36
The Big Sea (1940)
Responding to a question at his press conference (February 28, 1947); reported in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947, p. 191
“I am nothing, neither a chief nor a soldier.”
Recorded by a reporter after Sitting Bull's retreat to Canada after being defeated in the Black Hills War, originally published in the New York Herald on November 16, 1877. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 190.
“I believe in — I am proud to belong to — the United States.”
This I Believe (1952)
Context: I believe in — I am proud to belong to — the United States. Despite shortcomings, from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.
And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown — in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability … and goodness …. of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth, that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth — but that we will always make it … survive … endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure — will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage — and his noble essential decency.
This I believe with all my heart.
“I am the last President of the United States!”
A statement he is reported to have made several times to others after the secession of South Carolina, or as early as after the election of Abraham Lincoln (1860), as quoted in Lincoln's War: The Untold Story of America's Greatest President as Commander in Chief (2004) by Geoffrey Perret.
Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), p. 19
“Now I am a grandfather, I am very content. I can focus on improving the economy in Taiwan now.”
After his daughter gave birth to his grandson, October 7, 2002
Pet Phrases, 2002
“I am a poor man and have nothing else to give, but I offer you myself”
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Philosophers (Regnery, 1969), p. 75
Context: Aeschines said to him, "I am a poor man and have nothing else to give, but I offer you myself," and Socrates answered, "Nay, do you not see that you are offering me the greatest gift of all?"