Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.
Eric Hoffer

Mothers, tell your children: be quick, you must be strong. Life is full of wonder, love is never wrong. Remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear. Refuse to hand it down - the legacy stops here.
Melissa Etheridge
"Silent Legacy," Yes I Am, 1993

Mr. Garrison: Hey, guess what everybody? I'm gay!
Principal Victoria: Mr. Garrison?
Mr. Mackey: What?
Mr. Garrison: I'm as gay as a gymnast on shore leave!
Principal Victoria: You admit it? You admit it!!!
Mr. Mackey: Oh, that's great, Mr. Garrison. You've finally come to terms with yourself!
Mr. Garrison: Yeah, it feels really good!
Principal Victoria: Well, congratulations!
Mr. Mackey: Yeah, congratulations!
Mr. Garrison: You know, I feel like I can start anew. If it's not alright with you, I'd like to go back to teaching the third grade.
Principal Victoria: Oh. I'm sorry, we don't hire gay people.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
South Park

My cousin is an agoraphobic homosexual, which makes it kind of hard for him to come out of the closet.
Bill Kelly

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

My mom blames California for me being a lesbian. "Everything was fine until you moved out there." "That's right, Mom, we have mandatory lesbianism in West Hollywood. The Gay Patrol busted me, and I was given seven business days to add a significant amount of flannel to my wardrobe.
Coley Sohn

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

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

My sexual orientation? Horizontal, usually.
Bumper sticker

My theory is that the hardest work anyone does in life is to appear normal.
From movie Ed TV

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli

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

No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.
Rita Mae Brown
Speech, 28 August 1982

No matter how far in or out of the closet you are, you still have a next step.
Author Unknown

One should no more deplore homosexuality than left-handedness.
Towards a Quaker View of Sex
1964

People sometimes think I'm gay because I once played a gay in a movie. It's funny. Audiences don't think you're a murderer if you play a murderer, but they do think you're gay if you play a gay.
Perry King

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

Pronouns make it hard to keep our sexual orientation a secret when our co-workers ask us about our weekend. "I had a great time with... them." Great! Now they don't think you're queer - just a big slut!
Judy Carter

Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.
Matthew Arnold
"Self-Dependence," Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems, 1852

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

Some women can't say the word lesbian... even when their mouth is full of one.
Kate Clinton

Straight Americans need... an education of the heart and soul. They must understand - to begin with - how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul.
Bruce Bawer
The Advocate, 28 April 1998

That word "lesbian" sounds like a disease. And straight men know because they're sure that they're the cure.
Denise McCanles

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

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

The diagnosis of homosexuality as a "disorder" is a contributing factor to the pathology of those homosexuals who do become mentally ill.... Nothing is more likely to make you sick than being constantly told that you are sick.
Ronald Gold

The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
Gore Vidal

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The Lord is my Shepherd and he knows I'm gay.
Rev. Troy Perry

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The next time someone asks you, "Hey, howdja get to be a homosexual anyway?" tell them, "Homosexuals are chosen first on talent, then interview... then the swimsuit and evening gown competition pretty much gets rid of the rest of them."
Karen Williams

The one bonus of not lifting the ban on gays in the military is that the next time the government mandates a draft we can all declare homosexuality instead of running off to Canada.
Lorne Bloch

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.
Thomas Szasz

The radical right is so homophobic that they're blaming global warming on the AIDS quilt.
Dennis Miller

The Reagan Administration has fostered a climate in which a barest majority of the Supreme Court caters to the passions and hatreds of the American mob, stripping away the constitutional shield outside our bedrooms.... How tragically ironic that an Administration that promised to get Government "off our backs" is now so active in draping Government gumshoes over every part of our anatomies.
Carl T. Rowan

quoted in Unnatural Quotations compiled by Leigh W. Rutledge
The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow.
Charles R. Brown

The world is not divided into sheeps and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning sexual behavior the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.
Alfred Kinsey
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 1948

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anaïs Nin

There is just one life for each of us: our own.
Euripides

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

There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
Pearl Bailey

There's this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That's completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.
Boy George

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
The Bible
Leviticus, 18. 22

To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences - and unique to the United States. You don't hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood.
Gore Vidal

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying "Amen" to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories - fag and straight.
Gore Vidal

War. Rape. Murder. Poverty. Equal rights for gays. Guess which one the Southern Baptist Convention is protesting?
The Value of Families

We are not the first but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentleman, by two unstopable forces: freedom and equality
Jose Luis Rodrigueaz, Prime Minister of Spain
In speech given after Spain legalized gay marriage

We love men. We just don't want to see them naked.
Two Nice Girls

What are you trying to protect heterosexual marriages from? There isn't a limited amount of love in Iowa. It isn't a non-renewable resource. If Amy and Barbara or Mike and Steve love each other, it doesn't mean that John and Mary can't.
Ed Fallon

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

What's the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going to look and act like an imitation man?
Rita Mae Brown

When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.
Leonard P. Matlovich
Epitaph 1988, Thank you, Marlene

When it comes to exploring the sea of love, I prefer buoys.
Andrew G. Dehel

While many minority groups are the target for prejudice... and discrimination... in our society, few persons face this hostility without the support and acceptance of their family as do many gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth.
Virginia Uribe and Karen Harbeck

Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.
Boethius
The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

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

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
Ernest Gaines

Wouldn't it be great if you could only get AIDS from giving money to television preachers?
Elayne Boosler

You are digging for the answers until your fingers bleed, to satisfy the hunger, to satiate the need.... And as you pray in your darkness for wings to set you free, you are bound to your silent legacy.
Melissa Etheridge
"Silent Legacy," Yes I Am, 1993

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

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.
Barry Goldwater

You know what they say: You can't teach a gay dog straight tricks.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone
South Park, spoken by Chef

You'll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart.
George Michael
Kissing A Fool