Celebrate Gay Pride With These Quotes

The gay/lesbian lifestyle is one’s own personal choice and deserves respect like any other. After all, as humans, we have to coexist and should do so with open hearts and minds. Although you might not quite understand, we still don’t have the right to interfere in someone else’s affair.

This is why we’ve put together these inspiring Gay Pride quotes! To help open up the eyes of those with misconceptions toward the gay community and see the beauty within. They are some of the nicest people you can meet and will remain loyal friends to the end. Please enjoy the below quotes!

Our Favorite Gay Pride Quotes

1. “It is revolutionary for any trans person to choose to be seen and visible in a world that tells us we should not exist.” — Laverne Cox

2. “No one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hand of the person they love.” — Unknown Author

3. “Sometimes it takes more than shouting it to show your pride. It takes more than a sign, a fabulous outfit, or a month of parades. Pride has to resonate from within; shine out to everyone around you. It has meant something to you and only you first before you announce it to the world.” — Solange Nicole

4. “Openness may not completely disarm prejudice, but it’s a good place to start.” — Jason Collins

5. “Being gay is like being left-handed. Some people are, most people aren’t and nobody really knows why. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just the way things are!” — Unknown Author

6. “When you hear of Gay Pride, remember, it was not born out of a need to celebrate being gay. It evolved from our need as human beings to break free of oppression and exist without being criminalized, pathologized, or persecuted. Depending on several factors, particularly religion, freeing ourselves from gay shame and coming to self-love and acceptance, can not only be an agonizing journey, it can take years. Tragically some don’t make it. Instead of wondering why there isn’t a straight pride be grateful, you have never needed one. Celebrate with us.” — Anthony Venn-Brown

7. “All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.” — Harvey Milk

8. “Stand up for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone.” — Unknown Author

9. “As a young gay African, I have been conditioned from an early age to consider my sexuality a dangerous deviation from my true heritage as a Somali by close kin and friends. As a young gay African coming of age in London, there was another whiplash of cultural confusion that one had to recover from again and again: that accepting your sexual identity doesn’t necessarily mean that the wider LGBT community, with its own preconceived notions of what constitutes a “valid” queer identity, will embrace you any more welcomingly than your own prejudiced kinsfolk do.” — Diriye Osman

10. “It takes some intelligence and insight to figure out you’re gay and then a tremendous amount of balls to live it and live it proudly.” — Jason Bateman

Also see our quotes about pride in oneself

11. “My gay friend just admitted his love for me and he thinks I hate him. I’m about to show up at his house with flowers, pizza, and video games.” — Unknown Author

12. “Your judgments about another person say more about your own character than the character of the person you’re pointing a finger at.” — Alaric Hutchinson

13. “Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I’ve ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.” — Sir Ian McKellen

14. “I very much want to inject gay culture into the mainstream. It’s not an underground tool for me. It’s my whole life.” — Lady Gaga

15. “I’ve always loved being gay. Sure, Kenya was not exactly Queer Nation but my sexuality gave me joy. There was no place for me in heaven but I was content munching devil’s pie here on earth.” — Diriye Osman

16. “I’m living by example by continuing with my career and having a full, rich life, and I am incidentally gay.” — Portia DeRossi

17. “I think being gay is a blessing, and it’s something I am thankful for every single day.” — Anderson Cooper

18. “Protesting oftentimes takes a stance of offense; a form of violence that may not always be physical but is a form of violence all the same. Everyone has the right to be heard, but only if they are willing to really listen to others in an attempt to understand. As an atheist, I have never stood outside a church and disrupted their gathering, although I am willing to have a conversation about how my journey brought me here and how you have come to this point. For me to enter a gathering and protest is an offensive move that would cause the people involved to put up walls. It would not be welcomed and I would not do it. It would be a hindrance to us actually knowing and understanding each other. The only way to truly know someone is by being with them, by conversation.” — Eric Overby

Frank Kameny’s Best Quotes

19. “I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has taught me compassion.” — Ellen DeGeneres

20. “If you are in the closet and fall in love with someone of the same gender, it doesn’t automatically remove the shame and fear that’s kept you locked away. The love you are experiencing encourages you to face the reality that this is who you really are and also has the power to set you free. The richness, beauty, and depths of love can only be fully experienced in a climate of complete openness, honesty, and vulnerability. Love, the most powerful of human emotions, is calling you to freedom and wholeness.” — Anthony Venn Brown

21. “The protestor also asked me why I was there, did I have a family member who is gay? He stated, “You don’t just come to these things for no reason”. I replied, “Honestly, I did start going and taking my family to gay pride festivals just to be amongst other cultures. It’s good to get to know people who are different from yourself.” The world’s a big place and you may find that you have more in common with people than you think or, in this case, that you know more gay people than you think. I would like to say the same to you.” — Eric Overby

22. “The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you’ve just told them.” — Rachel Maddow

23. “We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity.” — George Takei

24. “Race, gender, religion, sexuality, we are all people and that’s it. We’re all people. We’re all equal.” — Connor Franta

25. “There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s a lot wrong with the world you live in.” — Chris Colfer

26. “All of us who are openly gay are living and writing the history of our movement. We are no more – and no less – heroic than the suffragists and abolitionists of the 19th century; and the labor organizers, Freedom Riders, Stonewall demonstrators, and environmentalists of the 20th century. We are ordinary people, living our lives, and trying as civil-rights activist Dorothy Cotton said, to ‘fix what ain’t right’ in our society.” — Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin

27. “What sexual preference do you hope she has?” “Happiness.” Isn’t that cool?” — Francesca Lia Block

28. “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

29. “I’ve been embraced by a new community. That’s what happens when you’re finally honest about who you are; you find others like you.” — Chaz Bono

30. “Love is never wrong.” — Melissa Etheridge

31. “I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest and feel most fortunate to be working with wonderful people in the business I love.” — Neil Patrick Harris

32. “Everybody’s journey is individual. You don’t know with whom you’re going to fall in love. … If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.” — James Baldwin

33. “I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You’re not scared. You’re a fool” — Morgan Freeman

34. “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

35. “Do we have to know who’s gay and who’s straight? Can’t we just love everybody and judge them by the car they drive?” — Ellen DeGeneres

36. “Being gay is natural. Hating gay is a lifestyle choice.“ — John Fugelsang

37. “When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all free.” — President Barack Obama

38. “The pressures on gay teens can be overwhelming–to keep secrets, tell lies, deny who you are, and try to be who you’re not. Remember: you are special and worth being cared about, loved, and accepted just as you are. Never, ever let anyone convince you otherwise.” — Alex Sanchez

39. From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.“ — Howard Dean

40. “Remember, bisexuality doesn’t mean halfway between gay or straight. It is its own identity.” — Evan Rachel Wood

41. “Where my evolution took place was not in my attitude toward same-sex couples, it was in understanding the pain and the sense of stigma that was being placed on same-sex couples who are friends of mine, where they’d say, “You know what, if you’re not calling it marriage, it doesn’t feel like the same thing.” — President Barack Obama

42. “You don´t have to be gay to be a supporter – you just have to be a human.” — Daniel Radcliffe

43. “But I always have and still do consider myself queer. To me, being queer isn’t who you’re sleeping with; it’s just an idea that sexuality isn’t gender-based, that it’s love-based.” — Ani DiFranco

44. “Gay people don’t actually try to convert people. That’s Jehovah’s Witnesses you’re thinking of.” — Tina Fey

45. “No, I’ve never thought that I was gay. And that’s not something you think. It’s something you know.“ — Robert Plant

Video: State of Pride

In this excellent YouTube Original documentary, 50 years after the Stonewall uprising, Oscar®-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and host Raymond Braun travel to three diverse communities – Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama – for an unflinching look at LGBTQ Pride, from the perspective of a younger generation for whom it still has personal urgency.

Summary

The above 45 Gay Pride Quotes provide insight into the gay community and their personal feelings about coming out!

If you have close friends or family who’re struggling with their own homosexuality, please invite them to browse our list of quotes.

If you need resources, be sure to see GLAAD’s website – https://www.glaad.org/resourcelist

We hope they’ve helped you be more comfortable with who you are no matter what anybody else thinks. After all, each of us as human beings is equaled regardless of our sexual preferences and/or gender identity.