Gay quotes
2.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside gay — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"There are some forty thousand children in California, according to the red brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think?"
"What do they do in these [private] clubs, anyway? Sit around saying things like 'Thank God I'm here. No Jews! What fun! This is living, huh? Look! No Jews! I don't know when I've had a better time. And no women! Just men! And no blacks! Just whites! White men! White men who are not Jewish! It doesn't get any better than this.' To some people, apparently, this is a perfect description of injustice. To me, this is a perfect description of a gay bar in Iceland."
"We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny . . . I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be."
"The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals."
"As someone who has enjoyed visiting Russia in the past and can also claim a degree of Russian ancestry, it would make me happy to say yes. However, as a gay man, I must decline."
"We've made so many advances in other areas - civil rights, gay rights - but ageism is still an area that's taboo and not talked about and dealt with."
"Give yourself permission to enjoy being gay. You do have to give yourself permission. You have been told you may not. Give yourself permission to be free."
"People were saying that David Geffen and I had gotten married and it just blew me away. Not that they thought I was gay, but that they thought I could land a guy that hot."
"If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters."
"Throughout my life, I've always been really close with girls and made friends with girls. And I've always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn't find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all."
"If anybody can find someone to love them and to help them through this difficult thing that we call life, I support that in any shape or form."
"Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don't are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn't put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a Lesbian."
"My struggle has allowed me to transcend that sense of shame and stigma identified with my being a Black gay man. Having come through the fire, they can't touch me."
"We're told to go on living our lives as usual, because to do otherwise is to let the terrorists win, and really, what would upset the Taliban more than a gay woman wearing a suit in front of a room full of Jews?"
"Being gay is like glitter, it never goes away."
"Out of the mists of our long oppression, / We bring love for ourselves and each other, / And love for the gifts we bear, /So heavy and so painful the fashioning of them, /So long the road given us to travel them. A separate people, /We bring a gift to celebrate each other, /’Tis a gift to be gay! / Feel the pride of it!"
"Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely."
"For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."
"I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."
"What was interesting was talking to older gay men about what it was like being gay in the Eighties."
