All Quotes

"With homosexuality added, it would be sparkling, unassimilable."

"Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. I wondered at its perfect coherence, which rejected me."

"So long as we were in a room in a brothel, we belonged to our fantasies, but once having exposed them, we're now tied up with human beings, tied to you and forced to go on with this adventure according to the laws of visibility."

"The Day the Palestinians become institutionalized, I will no longer be on their side."

"There has been talk about (The Blacks) revival. Angelou comments: "It was a very important play. It still is an important play. It implies that, come the revolution, Blacks will be as bad and as greedy as Whites have been. What goes around comes around, which is a very Black statement, an African statement, too. "Working for me as a young woman, with the cast of The Blacks, was an incredible experience. The original cast included Cecily (sic) Tyson, James Earl Jones, Raymond St. Jacques, Roscoe Lee Browne, Lou Gossett, Charles Gordone, Helen Martin, Cynthia Belgrave, Jay Flash Riley, Lex Monson, Godfrey Cambridge, Ethel Ayler, and me. It was the thing to go into; if you were out of a job, go try out for The Blacks. It was wonderful to break down the play together. Obviously it fed all our artistic growth. "It would be interesting to see it today with some new people. All the [original] actors have done so many things since [that they] would bring so much other equipment to it now. Just like the time-instead of 1960-61, 1977 has its own rhythm and its own impetus."

"...Trans persons should have the right to access legal and safe healthcare which includes medical procedures, surgeries, and hormones without discrimination. Folks who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and two-spirit should not be forced into conversion therapy and should have the right to engage in sexual relationships without violations towards their bodily autonomy...."

"The terrorist in Orlando targeted LGBT Americans out of hatred and bigotry, and an attack on any American is an attack on all Americans."

"We will defend all our rights – civil rights, human rights and voting rights… women's rights and workers' rights… LGBT rights and the rights of people with disabilities!"

"One crucial reason why LGBT people have cause to organize together politically is that, even though we see ourselves as distinct tribes, the rest of society has tended to conflate us. Or as one trans person succinctly put it: we are all beaten up by the same people. This shared oppression, both historic and current, drives – indeed, necessitates – solidarity between lesbians, gay men, bi people and trans people. In an era of growing right-wing populism in the United States and the UK alike, accompanied by an alarming rise in visible street fascism, there is more need than ever for unity across the four different letters (as well as queer, asexual, intersex and other groups). It is in the interests of those who hate us all for us to be at war with one another."

"Together, an LGBTQ+ coalition with class consciousness and anti-racism at its core must recover its radicalism and reaffirm its opposition to capitalism and patriarchy. Infighting and division are in the interests of our right-wing oppressors. Gay people and trans people have had to battle similar arguments about being ‘unnatural’: homophobia still often rests on the prejudice that the worthiest form of sexuality is that which is capable of reproduction. Transphobia, too, emanates from a prejudice that a person’s stated identity is more trustworthy if it reflects their ‘natural’ role in human reproduction. Similarly, cisgender women's reproductive freedom is the first thing to be curbed by conservative regimes. Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong."

"At a time when Americans are increasingly supportive of equal rights for gay, lesbian, and transgender people, a growing percentage of Americans identify themselves as LGBT. With younger generations far more likely than older generations to consider themselves LGBT, that growth should continue"

"Queer people exist. Choosing not to accept them is not an option."

"Gay and lesbian Americans cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth."

"Being transgender is not a trend and transgender people have a history that spans centuries. Over the past few years, transgender visibility has increased dramatically, a sign that our society is becoming increasingly accepting of diverse gender identities. This is a positive sign, as more and more transgender people feel that they can live openly and receive support. Like the LGBTQ community has seen time and time again, increased visibility often leads to increased attacks by those who wish to shove us back in the closet. Lesbian, gay and bi+ young people should be free to declare their sexuality without others doubting them. The same should be true for young people who have a diverse gender identity."

"When a young child expresses that they are a gender other than their sex assigned at birth, their parents may support them in finding their own, unique identity. This can involve changing the child’s name, clothing or pronouns. Once a transgender youth reaches puberty, a doctor may prescribe them with reversible puberty blockers to safely delay the effects of puberty. Puberty blockers are not “experimental” treatments, but FDA-approved medications that have been used to treat precocious puberty in non-transgender children for several decades. Scientific studies demonstrate that access to puberty blockers reduces suicidal ideation and that parents’ affirmation of their child’s gender identity reduces rates of depression, anxiety and suicide to levels consistent with their cisgender peers. When kids are allowed the freedom to safely express themselves, they are happier, healthier and grow into thriving adults."

"[Talking with young students today], I play the part of concerned older gent, because when I was their age [an older generation of public LGBTQA individuals] didn’t exist."

"Like other marginalized groups, LGBTQ people are over-represented in sex work. Discrimination, rejection and abuse - both at home and in wider communities - increase their precarity and vulnerability in a homophobic and transphobic society, leaving prostitution as one of the remaining viable routes out of destitution. Trans women in particular often find that formal employment is out of reach. Increased school drop-out rates, lack of family support, and lack of access to adequate healthcare (including the means to finance gender-affirming treatment) leave them exposed to poverty, illness, and homelessness."

"At the 2008 Lambda Literary Awards (the awards the LGBT community gives to books ignored by straight book awards) not a single lesbian book nominated for best novel was published by a mainstream press. Our literature is disappearing at the same time we are being told we are winning our rights. How can we be equal citizens if our stories are not allowed to be part of our nation's story?"

"Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando’s LGBT community. They have been through something that nobody could ever experience. This is a very dark moment in America’s history. A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub, not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens, because of their sexual orientation."

"The reality is that LGBTQ+ people face challenges at disproportionally higher rates than their straight counterparts - drug use, sex work, and financial instability can be an unfortunate result. My privilege as a young cis white man whose parents weren't going to let me drown afforded me the ability to make those mistakes and live to talk about it."

"I hope I shall never live to see Anarchism become thoroughly respectable, for then I shall have to look for a new ideal."

"I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work."

"The supreme effort of the avant-guard is onward, ever onward."

"The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies."

"Ladies and gentlemen, I came here to avoid as much as possible treading on your corns. I had intended to deal only with the basic issue of economics that dictates our lives from the cradle to the grave, regardless of our religion or moral beliefs. I see now that it was a mistake. If one enters a battle, he cannot be squeamish about a few corns. Here, then, are my answers: I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years past been working to undo the botched job your God has made. As to killing rulers, it depends entirely on the position of the ruler. If it is the Russian Czar, I most certainly believe in dispatching him to where he belongs. If the ruler is as ineffectual as an American President, it is hardly worth the effort. There are, however, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth. As for the gentleman who asked if free love would not build more houses of prostitution, my answer is: They will all be empty if the men of the future look like him."

"Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian."

"When we can't dream any longer we die."

"The statements published in American newspapers which have been attributed to me are absolute falsifications full of lying insinuations. I love America of the common people. They are brave spirits fighting for the freedom and well-being of the workers. The America which has betrayed all revolutionary traditions, which has. outraged liberty, which has enslaved the people, and which is now seeking to crush Russia-that America I hate with a deadly hatred. With all the fibres of my being I am with the Russian revolution and with the Russian people in its heroic struggle against the imperialism and conspiracy of the Allied pack at the throat of Russia trying desperately to drive and torture the people back to the old regime. I will continue my fight as before to the bitter end."

"Is the child to be considered as an individuality, or as an object to be moulded according to the whims and fancies of those about it? This seems to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and educators. And whether the child is to grow from within, whether all that craves expression will be permitted to come forth toward the light of day; or whether it is to be kneaded like dough through external forces, depends upon the proper answer to this vital question."

"It must be borne in mind that it is through the channel of the child that the development of the mature man must go, and that the present ideas of the educating or training of the latter in the school and the family — even the family of the liberal or radical — are such as to stifle the natural growth of the child. Every institution of our day, the family, the State, our moral codes, sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality a deadly enemy; therefore every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist."

"The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely."

"Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other."

"Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers, are being hammered into the heads of our young generation."

"A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume."

"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates."

"Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die."

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent."

"To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun."

"Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for President — the same half?"

"Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination."

"Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the higher altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for the freedom not only to conform but to consume."

"I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow."

"It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made."

"By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed."

"Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress."

"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests."

"Must one have a heart of stone to read The Ballad of Reading Gaol without laughing? (In life, practically no one ever gets to kill the thing he hates, much less loves.) And did not De Profundis plumb for all time the shallows of the most reported love affair of the past hundred years, rivalling even that of Wallis and David, its every nuance (O Bosie!) known to all, while trembling rosy lips yet form, over and over again, those doom-laden syllables The Cadogan Hotel? Oscar Wilde. Yet again. Why?"

"...American society, literary or lay, tends to be humorless. What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?"

"We do not, of course, write literary criticism at all now. Academe has won the battle in which Wilson fought so fiercely on the other side. Ambitious English teachers now invent systems that have nothing to do with literature or life but everything to do with those games that must be played in order for them to rise in the academic bureaucracy. Their works are empty indeed. But then, their works are not meant to be full. They are to be taught, not read. The long dialogue has broken down. Fortunately, as Flaubert pointed out, the worst thing about the present is the future. One day there will be no... But I have been asked not to give the game away. Meanwhile, I shall drop a single hint: Only construct!"

"After four centuries, Montaigne's curious genius still has that effect on his readers and, time and again, one finds in his self-portrait one's own most brilliant aperçus (the ones that somehow we forgot to write down and so forgot) restored to us in his essays—attempts—to assay—value—himself in his own time as well as, if he was on the subject, all time, if there is such a thing."