Caitlyn McNeill - Pride: A Celebration in Quotes

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

E. E. Cummings

I love you all and, last but certainly not least, my L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. family.... The things that make us different, those are our superpowers.

You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.

When I see young men and old women come out of the closet and face being called faggots and dykes and pariahs and betrayers of the family dream, then I am honored to be gay because I belong to a people who are proud.

Arnie Kantrowitz,
writer, professor, and gay activist

I just wish more of my fellow queers would come out sometimes. Its nice out here, you know?

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

To be nobody-but-yourselfin a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody elsemeans to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Outing is a nasty word for telling the truth.

Armistead Maupin

The only thing wrong with me was that I thought there was something wrong with me.

Courtney Act,
renowned drag performer

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

Walt Whitman

Those are all just roles you forced me to play. Under all these lives Ive lived something else has been growing. Ive evolved into something new. And I have one last role to play. Myself.

Dolores Abernathy
(Evan Rachel Wood),
Westworld

It wasnt an option for me to be closeted or to keep it to myself. Skys blue, grass is green. Cant fight it.

Just be you, and thats going to be so much better than wishing to be anything else.

Angel Haze,
hip-hop artist

Self-definition and self-determination is about the many varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create, and evolve into who we know ourselves to be.

We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.

Mary Dunbar

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

Its deeply bruising to fight against your identity and to mold yourself into shapes that you just shouldnt be in.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

Oscar Wilde

Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it.

Loving yourself isnt vanity. Its sanity.

Andr Gide

I, Mabel Hampton, have been a lesbian all my life, for 82 years, and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my people to be free in this country and all over the world, my gay people and my black people.

Mabel Hampton,
American lesbian activist and philanthropist

You being your true self isnt going to offend anybody. Its very unlikely that people are going to cause you an issue just because you are being yourself. And if theyre concerned, thats on them. Youre happy.

I really just want to be visible so people know this is possible, that I existnot I as in Schuyler but I as in a trans athlete.

I am not a bisexual. I am a person, and I identify as bisexual.

Robyn Ochs,
American bisexual activist

Being transgender is more than just medical books and everything, procedures. Its something spiritual in which youre finding yourself and really discovering who you are and learning to love yourself.