Showcasing Select LGBT Media of the Gay Civil Rights Movement

Mega Queer Quotations Theater

Our quotes collection is featured here. If you would like to contribute, join our Queer Quotations group.

"The only queer people are those who don't love anybody." ~Rita Mae Brown
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” ~Flannery O'Connor (American writer 1925-1964)
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." ~Harvey Fierstein
"I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant." ~Paul Newman
"You could move." ~Abigail Van Buren, "Dear Abby," (in response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood)
"When someone asks me, "are gay rights civil rights?" my answer is always, "Of course, they are." Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives: the right to equal treatment before the law. These are the rights shared by everyone. There is no one in the United States who does not, or should not, enjoy or share in enjoying these rights. Gay and lesbian rights are not special rights in any way. It isn't "special" to be free from discrimination. It is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship." ~NAACP National Chairman Julian Bond
"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group. || We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say "common struggle" because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination." ~Coretta Scott King
"Put on your big girl pants and deal with it." ~ Feminists everywhere
"One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness." ~Towards a Quaker View of Sex, 1964
"It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain." ~Francis Maude
"The fact that we are all human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish humans from one another." ~Simone de Beauvoir (1908--1986)
"Romance and work are great diversions to keep you from dealing with yourself." ~Cher
INTERVIEWER: "How do you do?" MAE WEST: "How do you do what?"
"When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." ~From the tombstone of a gay Vietnam veteran
"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." ~Lynn Lavner
"My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there praying for a man, and I'm giving them my share." ~Rita Mae Brown
"Why can't they have gay people in the army? Personally, I think they are just afraid of a thousand guys with M16s going: Who'd you call a faggot?" ~ John Stewart
"Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity." ~Don Marquis
"When water covers the head, a hundred fathoms are as one." ~Persian Proverb
"Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals. Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons." ~Letter to the editor, The Advocate
"If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?" ~Lily Tomlin
"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" ~Ernest Gaines
"If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work: Hello. Can't work today, still queer." ~Robin Tyler
"Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity...any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better." ~John Updike
"War. Rape. Murder. Poverty. Equal rights for gays. Guess which one the Southern Baptist Convention is protesting?" ~The Value of Families
"If time and space are curved, where do all of the straight people come from?" ~Unknown
"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains." ~Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1947
"There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats." ~Elton John
"I'd rather be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother." ~Charles Pierce, 1980
"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." ~G.K.Chesterton
"That word "lesbian" sounds like a disease. And straight men know because they're sure that they're the cure." ~Denise McCanles
"If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nailbiters." ~Anita Bryant
"Anita Bryant. Like Anita hole in the head." ~Graffiti
"The radical right is so homophobic that they're blaming global warming on the AIDS quilt." ~Dennis Miller
"Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich were shaking hands congratulating themselves on the introduction of an antigay bill in Congress. If it passes, they won't be able to shake hands, because it will then be illegal for a prick to touch an asshole." ~Judy Carter
"My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror." ~W. Somerset Maugham
"Drag is when a man wears everything a lesbian won't." ~Unknown
"I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated 'all my homosexual patients are quite sick' - to which I finally replied 'so are all my heterosexual patients'." ~Ernest van den Haag, psychotherapist
"For a long time I thought I wanted to be a nun. Then I realized that what I really wanted to be was a lesbian." ~Mabel Maney
"When it comes to exploring the sea of love, I prefer buoys." ~Andrew G. Dehel
"The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit." ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886
"If male homosexuals are called 'gay', then female homosexuals should be called 'ecstatic'." ~Shelly Roberts
"My mother took me to a psychiatrist when I was fifteen because she thought I was a latent homosexual. There was nothing latent about it." ~Amanda Bearse
"Some women can't say the word lesbian... even when their mouth is full of one." ~Kate Clinton
"No matter how far in or out of the closet you are, you still have a next step." ~Unknown
"People who can't think of anything else but whether the person you love is indented or convex should be doomed not to think of anything else but that, and so miss the other ninety-five percent of life." ~Robert Towne
"The closet is an awful place to die." ~Unknown
"The American is hysterical about his manhood." ~Gore Vidal
"To fall in love with yourself is the first secret of happiness. I did so at the age of four-and-a-half. Then if you're not a good mixer you can always fall back on your own company." ~Robert Morley
"There is only one success -- to spend your life in your own way." ~Christopher Morley
"We declare that love cannot exist between two people who are married to each other. For lovers give to each other freely, under no compulsion; married people are in duty bound to give in to each other's desires." ~Marie, Countess of Champagne 1174
"Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own." ~G.C. Lichtenberg
"You must believe in God, in spite of what the clergy say." ~Benjamin Jowett
"You can't change the music of your soul." ~Katherine Hepburn
"We are all omnibuses in which our ancestors ride, and every now and then one of them sticks his head out and embarrasses us." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
"I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice." ~Carl Jung
"If you accept your limitations you go beyond them." ~Brendan Francis
"The most important thing is to be whatever you are without shame." ~Rod Steiger
"Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome; in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather." ~Mark Twain
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." ~Albert Einstein
"Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner." ~Oscar Wilde
"I can take any amount of criticism, so long as it is unqualified praise." ~Noel Coward
"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." ~Gloria Steinem
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." ~Mahatma Gandhi
"The best things and best people rise out of their separateness. I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise." ~Robert Frost
"I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid." ~Dorothy Parker
"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions." ~Woody Allen
"The only reason I feel guilty about masturbation is that I do it so badly." ~David Steinberg
"Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change." ~Frank Lloyd Wright
"It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else." ~John Cage
"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity." ~Albert Einstein
"The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one." ~Brook Atkinson
"Sexual harassment at work -- is it a problem for the self-employed?" ~Victoria Wood
"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?" ~Henry James
"As soon as man apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom, his activity is play." ~Jean-Paul Sartre
"Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be." ~Rita Rudner