“if I was defended they simply said I had been defended. But I don’t think they have taken any effort at maligning me or maligning gays or making any effort to give to people anything that wasn’t news.”

Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.

My activism did not spring from being black…The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family.

I would say that the black newspapers have played it very straight. If I was attacked they simply published that I was attacked.

Every indifference to prejudice is suicide because, if I don’t fight all bigotry, bigotry itself will be strengthened and, sooner or later, it will return on me.

Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: ‘The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.’

God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.

Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it at which point they can become human too.

I don’t want to seem intolerant to them and I think we have to say that to them with a great deal of affection, but remaining in the closet is the other side of the prejudice against gays. Because until you challenge it, you are not playing an active role in fighting it.

Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.

You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.

Black gay activists should try to build coalitions of people for the elimination of all injustice.

I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.

The proof that one truly believes is in action.

I would say except when I have been attacked the black community has seldom seen fit to even mention the gay aspect. And since when I have been attacked I have usually been defended by the black community,

I believe in social dislocation and creative trouble.

We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.

Are you keeping anything else from me? Im keeping a lot of things from you. Like? Like the way i feel about being locked up in here with you. You have no idea what you do to me.

Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.

The bicycle… has been responsible for more movement in manners and morals than anything since Charles the Second.

Like some helpful person (hi, Mom) has tried to “‘clean'” it, and suddenly you can’t find anything?

It is hard to believe long together that anything is “worth while,” unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind.

Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

I wish the music business was a much easier thing, but you know what? Nothing easy is worth anything. So it is what it is.